Peggy Sue (The T'aafhal Inheritance) (28 page)

The 1.5 billion kilometers back to Farside Base passed quickly, with the ship accelerating at 20 Gs for 10 hours and then coasting at nearly 13 million kph before decelerating to make lunar orbit, a little over 5 days total. After arriving, a couple of engineering techs, who were only on board for the shakedown cruise, were shuttled down to the base. On the return trip, a few late additions to the science section ferried up to the ship, along with fresh supplies and replacement parts.

Then, final goodbyes said, the Peggy Sue headed for the alter-space transfer point to Gliese 581. Their destination lay slightly south of the ecliptic plane and 20.55 light years away. The transfer point lay almost an AU outside Earth’s orbit, beyond the orbit of Mars. The ship took a leisurely three days to carefully align its course vector to the faint red star, invisible to the naked eye from Earth.

The Captain was being extra careful in setting the ship’s course, since this would be the longest trip through the Universe’s hidden dimensions yet attempted. The trip through alter-space would take nearly 20 days—three times as long as the trip to Beta Comae. This despite the fact that Beta Comae was more than thirty light years away, 50 percent farther away than Gliese 581. It was because of Gliese 581’s small mass that the trip would take so long and extra care was needed with the entry parameters.

Finally, all conditions were met and the Captain ordered the ship’s computer to take them into alter-space. Viewed from outside, the 8,000 ton vessel appeared to ripple and vanish, leaving behind a burst of gamma rays and a spray of fundamental particles—the second mission of the Peggy Sue was underway.

Third Moon, Gas Giant, CF Ursae Majoris

CF Ursae Majoris, also known as Groombridge 1830, is unusually faint for its spectral type. A G8 type star, it is sufficiently cool to have not evolved appreciably since its formation—spectral analysis classified it as a yellow-orange halo subdwarf star with perhaps 60 percent of Sol’s mass, but only 19 percent of its luminosity. It is, however, no innocuous little star.

 Halo subdwarf status suggests that the star formed during a period of rapid collapse that lasted perhaps a billion years in the early history of the Milky Way galaxy, when the galactic disk was just starting to form. This would make the star around 10 billion years old, twice the age of the Sun. More importantly, the designation ‘CF’ identifies Groombridge 1830 as a type of flare star. Some Sol-type stars of spectral classes F and G have been observed producing enormous magnetic outbursts—coronal mass ejections that release between hundreds and millions of times more energy than the largest flares ever observed on the Sun.

These super-flares can last an hour or a week, during which they increase the normal luminosity of a star by as much as a thousand fold. If our Sun were to produce such a super-flare Earth’s ozone layer would be destroyed and ice on the daylight side of moons as far out as Jupiter and Saturn would melt. This dangerously volatile condition makes CF Ursae Majoris an unlikely system to harbor life, but on the third moon of the system’s single large gas giant planet, it does just that.

An ammonia based biosphere on that moon managed to produce a dominant, intelligent species in spite of its star’s occasional fiery outbursts. These creatures simply referred to themselves as ‘people’. On their own, they developed a rudimentary technological civilization, to the point where they launched satellites into orbit around the gas giant their world circles. Perhaps one day they would have made it to the stars on their own, but that was not their destiny.

The people’s primitive space program attracted the attention of a probe ship belonging to the Dark Ones. From the point of view of the Dark Ones, the inhabitants of CF Ursae Majoris did not quite qualify as a species of the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned warm life. They occupied an intermediate position on the continuum of life forms from hot to frigid. Rather than cleanse the moon of all life, the Dark Ones decided to co-opt its inhabitants, turning them into Janissaries—soldier slaves in the service of the empire of darkness.

From the point of view of the People it was a good deal, they traded extinction for a chance to travel the stars—the only catch was they had to occasionally snuff out life on other worlds. And so it came to pass that a ship, more than five kilometers long with a great mushroom cap of rocky debris at its head, was dispatched on a mission of extermination. It would travel first to the system known to humans as Beta Comae Berenices, where it would pick up the trail of the latest warm life vermin to vex the dark masters.

Their voyage of destruction would continue until some temperate planet with a functioning ecosystem was laid waste—the Dark Ones did not accept failure. If this meant that those on board the Destroyer of Worlds might never see home again, so be it. That was the pact they had made with the Dark Ones, a Faustian bargain that would someday claim their species’ collective soul. But for now, the people enjoyed riches, technology and power. Compared with that, what did the continued existence of a species they had never met matter? It was not like they were people.

Engineering Workshop, Peggy Sue, Alter-space Day 10

JT and Bear were staring intently at the fabricator, as though their impatience could speed up production of the new part. Inside its protective cover, the fab was constructing a complex, three dimensional object from powdered metal and laser light. The growing metal part was based on a design by JT, who was anxious to see the result of his labors, but it was Bear who was truly excited.

Both JT and Bear had been active participants in the two battles Earthlings fought against the aliens. It was JT who had redesigned the Marines’ weapons and created the first type of battle armor. Worn during the battle on board the refueling station in the Beta Comae system—called the Battle of the Space Mushroom by the Marines—the old armor was heavy and clunky but it had undoubtedly saved several lives.

From that experience more advanced, powered armor was developed, along with more refined weapons to go with it. With the help of GySgt Rodriguez and the science staff, they even produced a number of armed, six wheeled autonomous robots that could be used for area defense and sentry duty. These developments were all good, but one thing continued to aggravate Bear.

When the fighting got up close and personal, the humans were happy to flail away at the enemy with their armored fists. Some might even confess to enjoying aggression on such an immediate and personal level. The bears could also bludgeon their opponents with their even more sizable forelegs but, from an ursine point of view, something was missing—claws.

Nature had given polar bears five steak knife length claws on each paw, armament that the bears grew up with. While smacking things around with armored suit mitts was fairly effective, the bears, without exception, missed being able to rip open an adversary with their claws. So several weeks into the long alter-space transit to Gliese 581, having tired of Bear’s persistent complaining, JT decided to rectify the claw situation.

The fabricator began beeping, an indication that it had completed its task. “All right,” said JT, opening the fab unit. “Let’s see what we have here.”

Bear stood over his shoulder, shifting back and forth from left paw to right. “I can’t wait to see this,” he said. “Fighting without claws is like having sex while wearing, well, a spacesuit.”

“Keep your fur on, big guy. We still need to polish them up and sharpen the edges, assuming they work this time.” The first few attempts had been less than satisfactory. The metal claws either interfered with the operation of firearms and other manual tasks, or they did not protrude far enough to be used effectively. “Slip on your suit torso so I can attach the claws to the carrier piece.”

Bear hustled to comply. This latest attempt consisted of a carrier that fit on the foreleg section of a bear’s armor. Into this was fit the claw module itself, consisting of four long metal fingers ganged together at their base, tipped with 12cm long knife edged blades. When not in use, the claws would retract safely into the carrier on Bear’s arm.

Bear stared intently as JT inserted the new part into the existing carrier piece, already attached to Bear’s suit. “OK, we are going to have to adjust the extension trigger. Remember what I told you, if you curve your real claws forward inside your gauntlet the metal claws should deploy—give it a try.”

“Right,” bear said, holding his arm out and flexing his natural claws withing the suit. With a sound of metal sliding on metal, the four prosthetic claws shot into place. “Oh, do I like that!”

“Try retracting them.”

Bear straighten his paw, but nothing happened. For a few seconds he waived his foreleg around and finally, the four metallic claws snapped back into the carrier. “Needs a little adjustment,” he commented.

“Yeah, put your arm on the bench and let me adjust the sensors,” JT replied. “Then we can try hacking up a few things, just to make sure they don’t break off the first time you try to use them.”

“That would suck,” Bear acknowledged, complying with JT’s request. “I tell you JT, this is going to make the other bears very happy, almost as happy as I am.”

“I see shredded aliens in our future,” JT said dryly. “Just don’t be so anxious to go Wolverine on our next opponents that you forget you have firearms. I know bears like to mix it up, paw to paw, but these are for desperate circumstances, not a weapon of first choice.”

“What’s a ‘Wolverine’?”

“A comic book character whose claws extend like these do. In fact, that’s where I got the idea from. I’ll clean the first set up while the fab makes a second set for your other arm, then we can do some serious testing.”

“OK, now about teeth…”

Bridge, Peggy Sue, Gliese 581 System

Nearly twenty days after entering alter-space, a sense of excitement, of anxious expectation, ran through all on board. The bridge was fully manned and the Captain was in the command chair as the seconds to reemergence ticked down to zero. With the briefest of tremors, the ship slid between dimensions and once again found itself in normal 3-space.

Ahead, directly in front of the ship’s transparent bow, was Gliese 581—a malevolent red ember looming as large as Sol seen from Earth. That the small red dwarf appeared so large was an indication of how close to the star they had emerged, a distance of around a half an AU, roughly the radius of Mercury’s orbit back home.

 The Captain snapped out orders: “Shields to standard. Helm, put us in a solar orbit. Mr. Taylor, see if we are alone in the system and locate any planets.” A chorus of “aye ayes” answered as the crew bent to their tasks.

“Captain, I have a terrestrial planet, approximately 1.7 Earth mass, orbiting very close to the star. Looks like an orbital radius of only 0.03 AU,” reported JT from the astronomy and navigation console. “That would give it a year of about 3.15 days—it must be 581e.”

“That is too close for any reasonable chance of life,” added Elena, who was also sitting at the astronomy station. “We are looking for planets with orbits between 0.08 and 0.24 AU.”

“There is another planet close in, this one is the size of Neptune but only 0.04 AU out,” JT read off. “Ah, now this is more like it. I have a terrestrial planet, orbit 0.22 AU, that’s near the outer edge of the habitable zone. Mass is 5.7 and the diameter is 1.9 times that of Earth, with a year lasting 67 Earth days. I’m getting spectral indications of nitrogen, oxygen, H
₂
O and CO
₂
in the atmosphere.”

“Almost six times as massive as Earth?” asked Lcdr. Curtis, “isn’t that going to make the surface gravity significantly higher than home?”

“It looks like the density is not as high as Earth, and given the mass and diameter the surface gravity should be 15.47 m/sec
²
, 1.578 times Earth normal,” JT answered, looking up from his instrument display. “That’s noticeably higher than home, but manageable.”

“I’m getting mixed temperature readings, the night side is well below freezing and the readings from the daylight equatorial zone are above 50ºC.” added Elena. “The planet’s rotation must be tidally locked, try to narrow the temperature sensors to focus on the day-night terminator.” 

“Yeah, I’m getting readings from patches of land around 6-8º, which is a bit cool but certainly habitable. Quite a bit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, nearly ten times Earth levels, and the surface is mostly water—one giant ocean on the front side and totally frozen over on the back. It looks like there is a permanent storm system at the point nearest the star and large circulation cells from there to the terminator. The wind probably howls down there most of the time.”

“So it is worth a closer look?” asked the Captain.

“Yes! Very much so,” exclaimed Elena, her eyes bright. “This is much better than I could have hoped for. An oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere with plenty of liquid water, in a system that is 3 to 4 billion years older than the solar system—if life is common in the Universe then we should find it here.”

“Very good, Dr. Piscopia. Mr. Medina, ready a couple of survey drones for orbital injection,” Jack ordered. “Helm, make for the planet indicated by Mr. Taylor. I think a polar orbit above the day-night terminator would be appropriate…”

Valley of the Trailing Conclave, Gliese 581d

SudNabSon the Contemplative became the nexus for information interchange among the savants of the Trailing Conclave. This was based on their clarity of thought and ability to quickly assimilate new data. Forming a nexus was required based on a report by TagFetLuw the Outward Looking, verified by GipNarKos the Ensurer of Continuity, that a spacecraft harboring life of some form had just emerged from the lesser dimensions into local spacetime in close proximity to the world. An extended consensus would be required.