Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  The Starhawks looked like just that, giant hawks, with their wings spread wide. The command bridge was located in the head of the bird. And the vessels were named not for US presidents, but for Sci-Fi writers. The Carl Sagan, The Philip K. Dick, The Jules Verne, and so on. Mother clearly put more stock in sci-fi authors and futurists than she put in Earth’s presidents. Not surprising; she was a wise woman.

  “Crew size?” Crumley asked.

  “Four-hundred-fifty,” Mother advised them.

  The Starhawks didn’t look all that friendly. The Kang dragon ships still looked meaner—and they were still way bigger. But there was no denying the confidence-boosting air these vessels gave off. They might well make up for their smaller size by increased maneuverability. And some species of bee, though smaller, had a much nastier sting.

  By “these vessels” Crumley meant the hundreds, or was that thousands, of them dotting the landing bay? It was a bit like looking at an Escher painting. It was hard to gauge where this place ended, or where it began, for that matter.

  Crumley couldn’t imagine that Mother wouldn’t have most of these Starhawks deployed already. For sure, they’d be entirely self-piloting with their onboard AIs, crews optional. They would be needed to run interference with the Kang and with the colliding galaxies. Very possibly the augmented-reality view they were being treated to was meant more as a morale booster. Or, as the flipside of that coin, they were looking at the ships she meant to print up—when she got the chance, VR filling in the void for now. He knew better than to ask a question he didn’t want to know the answer to if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

  Hoverboards were arriving, courtesy of the landing bay AI, to scurry who was present of Omega Force to their respective war birds.

  Crumley hesitated just a bit longer than the others to hop on, not entirely convinced one of these flimsy boards could handle his behemoth size. But the board did just fine.

  “Do Leon proud, gentlemen,” Crumley said, “and do what you do best.”

  “Hooya!” blasted the chorus.

  Crumley knew that their various specialties would play off one another as readily apart from one another as up close. And soon they would be fighting as a coordinated unit even when spread out among four different war birds. The Starhawks were just fancy suits of armoring, after all.

  Crumley’s hoverboard took him to his warbird, the Starhawk Stanislaw Lem.

  As fun as it was to gawk at the ship’s exterior from the various vantage points of the approaching hoverboard, he didn’t have time to smell the roses, as it were. The time it took just to board one of these things, let alone the time to launch them out of the landing bay, was plenty of time for worlds to die beyond the protective shields of the Nautilus—assuming the shields held.

  He used his mindchip to leaf through the interiors of his Starhawk even before he boarded, to “dumb down” the awe further. He needed the Stanislaw Lem to feel old and familiar when he boarded. In the time he had to work with, “awe” could easily cripple his body like shock; it was, after all, shock at a lower setting. And this much shock, even at a “lower setting,” considering how much of the ship there was to take in, would dull his mind come time to use it to purposeful ends.

  No one was going to get the ramp-up time they needed.

  Tough shit.

  That was war for you.

  Even when you had time to prepare, it usually took less than a few seconds for those best laid plans to go right out the window.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  ABOARD THE STARHAWK

  STANISLAW LEM

  The captain’s chair was on a swivel. As Crumley rotated slowly in the chair, overlooking the bridge, his robot crewmates took on quite distinct humanoid forms; they could now be referred to more properly as androids. They could also now pass for members of Theta Team. The holographic overlays were quite convincing. “I gather,” Crumley said, “I can take this to mean this ship has its own supersentience, and it’s mind-linked to me, and it could tell I was a little creeped out by all the tin foil.”

  “Duh.” The “duh” sounded like the mike was giving some feedback, resisting the voice speaking into it. Maybe because the AI was pushing the limits of its parameters disrespecting its crew like this.

  “How old are you?” Crumley asked, finding that the AI talking to him sounded too young.

  “I have the personality of a twelve-year-old, and a six digit IQ. I’m going to have such fun terrorizing you.”

  Crumley repressed a smile. “This ship should definitely have gone to DeWitt,” he mumbled under his breath. “We’ll sort that all out later.”

  He took a second look at his crew. “Techa, I feel like I’ve known these people all my life. Is my XO really sleeping with two of the females and one of the males on the bridge?”

  The crew members Crumley had obliquely referred to smiled and waved at him, and worse, nodded.

  “I took the liberties of filling in the blanks,” the ship’s chief supersentience said. “I’m Danny, by the way.”

  “Hi, Danny, a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Says the man who’s yet to take a maiden voyage with me. Hold that thought.”

  “Let’s get going,” Crumley said. “The galaxy’s going to hell in a hand basket in the time it’s taking you to fire up your after burners.”

  The Nautilus landing bay doors were sliding open.

  And The Starhawk Stanislaw Lem was pivoting toward it.

  A split second later Crumley’s craft shot out the opening just big enough to entertain a ship this size—at full speed. Crumley felt like an armed torpedo someone had set in motion. “How did you do that?” he squawked, clenching the handles of his captain’s chair.

  “You’re too dumb to understand. But I hear you’re quite the explosives expert. There’s still time to redeem yourself then for disturbing my video gaming.”

  “You have something more exciting going on in your head than a trans-galactic war?”

  “Duh. A multiverse war. These smaller scale war games are so three years ago, when I was just nine, at least in my head.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to keep you from dropping off to sleep,” Crumley gritted out. “Come out of warp speed, please.”

  The ship dropped its speed to something that allowed Crumley to process what was going on out the viewport. The ship pulled up just in time to keep from colliding with a Kang dragon ship. Otherwise, the Stanislaw Lem would have gone out like a mallard colliding with a supersonic’s ram jet engine.

  “Sorry about that, Captain,” said Crumley’s navigator, a salamander of a guy, down to the tail he was using to swivel back and forth on his chair nervously. He patted his six exposed toes on each foot on the floor, the way a human rattled their nails on a car door’s handle.

  Crumley put his eyes back on the portal, a 2000-inch monitor, measured along the diagonal.

  Danny was right; Crumley’s best play, even as a space ship commander, was to deduce where to place explosives that could get them the most bang for the buck.

  They were being harried by no less than five Kang dragon ships. The fact that they had that many of those large ships to throw at him was disconcerting in itself. Crumley’s comparatively small vessel was hardly worth it. All the same… It could be a blessing in disguise.

  “Why don’t we take up a position dead center of those five ships,” Crumley said, “and let them fire at us.”

  “I take back what I said about there being any chance of you redeeming yourself,” Danny replied.

  “Hear me out. I want to stick a mirage of the Stanislaw Lem there. Knowing the Kang, the more they fire on it and get nowhere, the more enraged they will become, the more they’ll up the ante…”

  “You want them to trigger a black hole that will gobble up their five ships?”

  Crumley chuckled. “I do believe you’re tracking me now. Assuming you can perform the necessary supersentient calculations, of course.”

  Danny made a dismissi
ve sound, like a bike tire blowing out. “He’s baiting me. Lucky for you, I like being baited.”

  Danny cloaked the Stanislaw Lem at the same moment he moved the still visible clone of the ship to the geographic center of the five ships.

  Not being ones to miss a cue to kill an obvious target, the five dragon ships hit the Stanislaw Lem playing possum with everything they had. And when that wasn’t enough, they upped the ante, and upped it, and upped it…

  But by concentrating that much energy and mass on such a small point in space…

  Crumley watched the black hole taking shape with satisfaction.

  By the time the Kang caught on to the trap they’d walked into, it had already been sprung, and there was no getting away.

  “This is my favorite part,” Danny said. “Family-friendly mass extermination. It’s not like there’s even any blood that’s going to spill out that black hole.”

  Crumley stifled a smile. “You’re a little weird, Danny.”

  “You must be British. I’m not sure the British get Americans either. You kill off more than a dozen people in a story, all they can do is go on about the death toll. I think they fail to appreciate our contribution to the art of war.”

  “I’m sure we can get them to convert to our way of looking at things, Danny. Just be patient. We’re just getting going.”

  Danny laughed. “I’m starting to like you.”

  “I’m mortified.”

  “That is the proper human response, yes.”

  As the last of the Kang ships disappeared into oblivion, Crumley said, “Let’s get going, Danny. I’d hate to think I was arriving more than fashionably late to the party.”

  Danny took them away from their current location—mercifully a safe distance away from the grip of the black hole—at warp speed.

  Crumley’s sense of triumph was muted by the realization of just how over the top the weapons capabilities on a dragon ship had to be for a concentration of their fire to open a black hole. His idea had been based on a long shot. He almost wished he was wrong.

  When the Starhawk Stanislaw Lem dropped back into regular space-time again, Crumley reflexively put his hand up to his face to cover his eyes. “I swear you do this on purpose.”

  Danny laughed. “Maybe.”

  “What’s the bright light about?” Crumley still couldn’t take his hand away from his eyes.

  “I read your mind.” Crumley had forgotten about his mindchip that Danny would have had no trouble hacking. In the absence of a mindchip, the nanite-rich atmosphere would have allowed Danny to percolate Crumley’s brain with the nanites, and use the nanococktail to bleed him of his secrets just as readily. “I thought what you were contemplating next was a pretty smooth move,” Danny said. “We’re flying through the sun, dropping the kinds of incendiaries that will cause it to go supernova—a play on the idea you got from watching the Kang dragonship fly through a world as if it were merely a hologram, to emerge on the other side.”

  They came out the other side of the sun as Danny said that. He gave Crumley the rearview window view of the sun exploding—and taking out a dozen or so Kang castle worlds in the process.

  “Can the Kang dragon ships do that?” Crumley asked.

  “Nope. But you know that won’t stop them from trying. You’re right, they’re very predictable.”

  “You’re moving us into orbit around a sun to tempt them to try the same stunt,” Crumley said, studying the viewport, revealing not only their new location relative to this sun, but the rapidly closing dragon ships. “Nice.”

  “You’ll please notice that those are the giant, mother ships, not the regular sized dragon ship galaxy destroyers.”

  “They’re hoping that the mother ships can pull off the stunt we just pulled off?”

  “More like they’re hoping that by combining the shield strength and thrusters of the five mother ships that they can get through the sun before the ships disintegrate. Kind of like flying those stackable control kites,” Danny explained.

  Crumley nodded his understanding. “Will that work?”

  “Doubtful. But it’s possible they never tested the Dead Zone tech they stole this fully before. In which case…”

  “We’re screwed. We just gave them a way to tip the scales regarding the outcome of this war.”

  “Got news for you, it was tipped in that direction already.”

  Crumley could do nothing now but wait.

  And wait. Techa, how long did it take to fly through a sun exactly! They seemed to pass through that last one pretty quickly. “Hey, how did you get us through the sun, by the way?”

  “Another phantom projection. Like I said, the Kang are really dumb. They live to be fooled by the same gag over and over again.”

  “But…”

  “I had the engineering bay AI’s weapons section whip up a sun-killer explosive based on an extrapolation of some of your ideas, which I just lobbed into the sun.”

  Crumley sighed. “Not bad. But you’re saying you couldn’t have gotten us through a sun for real?”

  “Don’t tempt me. I’m more suicidal than your typical Omega Force operative. It’s not like Mother thought long and hard how to make a supersentience my age when she spit out these galaxy-grade destroyers. I was something of an afterthought.”

  Crumley groaned. “The nerve of the bitch.”

  “I’m telling ya, right?”

  Crumley rubbed his chin and fretted, staring at the monitor, wondering about the fate of the five Kang mother ships. “You’re doing it to me again, aren’t you? Watching me sweat just for the fun of it.”

  Silence.

  Then distorted laughter. “All right, you got me. Those ships are toast.” Danny showed the failing mother ships turning to ash before they could escape the gravity well of the sun and the more extreme forces and temperatures there. The bombs the Kang ships were trying to drop into the sun just created more blowback for their own vessels to contend with, which was the final straw. “They may be rated to fly through suns, but not to blow them up, apparently. Who knew?”

  “You know, I was thinking…”

  Danny laughed even louder. “Oh, I like that idea even better than the last.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  ABOARD THE DEAD ZONE SPACE STATION, THE CALAMITOUS

  Patent noticed his latest cloned Alpha Unit team was fast at work getting the tech on Calamitous operational again so it could handle its end of wartime operations. To say nothing of the inconvenient truth of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spaceships colliding with one another, ill-prepared to handle this whole When Galaxies Collide affair.

  He returned his eyes to the wrap-around port window encircling the entire space station where the truth of what he was picturing in his mind was even worse. “Thank Theta, Leon had the good sense to make multiple copies of me to handle this situation.”

  Skyhawk, standing beside him, grimaced. “Self-important much?”

  Without turning away from the port screen, Patent answered, “Only on days like today, kid. Only on days like today.” He panned to the relative Lilliputian standing beside his hulking frame. “Why, if it’s not the fly on the hog’s ass.” He took in Skyhawk’s sour expression. “What, crowding you?”

  “A little.” Skyhawk returned his eyes to the monitor. “What are we going to do about this situation?”

  “No idea. Figured I’d leave that up to you.” Patent regarded him with a smirk. “Feeling better yet?”

  Skyhawk smirked back. “Much.” He pushed Hulk out of the way one-handedly, Patent doing his best to stifle his smile. When Skyhawk found he’d only managed to push himself away from the immovable stone man, irked, he threw another annoyed look Patent’s way. But Patent was already off on a mission of his own. Skyhawk mumbled, “Whatever he’s up to, let’s hope the mope can at least stay out of my way.” He fixed his eyes on his handheld scanner and then the port, continuing to bounce his eyes back and forth between what his analytics and his eyes were tellin
g him.

  His handheld scanner was tapped into the repair work Alpha Unit was doing, receiving the intel from the Calamitous’s systems coming back on line. Much of the stuff just needed the on-switch flicked from what he could tell; the ship was in near perfect condition after eternities of being kept in mothballs.

  He gazed up again at the port and Patent was in the two-person UFO of his own design, heading straight into that ungodly mess of colliding stellar bodies and mad-as-hell ship captains firing on anything and everything just to keep from colliding with the unforeseen. “The mad man,” Skyhawk bitched. “Is it even necessary to put his life at risk? No. Is he getting in my way? Yes. Same old, same old.”

  He took over the controls for the Calamitous from a different screen on his handheld scanner. He swung the Calamitous cylinder’s circular ends into position and fired. The circular beams—as wide as the circular ends of the cylinder world—parted the colliding worlds like pool sticks stuck between pool balls at the most inopportune time. There just wasn’t enough time to swing the cylinder world around in time to use one of the circular ends as a firing option, necessitating he use both instead in this manner.

  When Skyhawk couldn’t move the Calamitous out of the way in time to avoid it colliding with a Kang dragon ship, he pressed a button on his handheld, affecting the molecular structure of everything inside Calamitous—crew included—allowing the dragon ship to pass harmlessly through them as if they were merely a ghostly apparition haunting the Kang from another reality.

  Skyhawk was growing rapidly fond of Dead Zone tech.

  Feeling full of himself, he gazed back at the port in time to see them heading straight toward a sun whose gravitational well was already too great to pull out of. That sort of killed the moment of elation. “Now, what is that idiot up to? Just what does he think he can do…?” He regarded Patent zooming his UFO straight into the heart of the sun—moving at phenomenal speed. He was already damn near the center of the giant star. He fired a starburst solution of some kind, collapsing the sun’s size to a fraction of what it was, weakening the gravitational pull on Calamitous, and allowing Skyhawk to use one of the cylinder’s ends to push them away. “Well, that was actually kind of useful. Go figure.”