Beyond Kuiper: The Galactic Star Alliance Read online

  Well, that and the fateful events of six years ago...

  He delved back in his mind to Switzerland. It was 2085. The final fragments of glacial ice reflected dawn’s light, giving the vast mountain ridges an aura. Past that, an enormous range of peaks, each cascading larger than the one before, consumed every inch of viewable space. A winding road cut through the ridges, sharing its secrets with every passing vehicle.

  Deep in the range, hidden from view, laid a place unlike any other, CERN. It was home to thousands of gifted scientists, all working to achieve a better, more sustainable life away from this solitary dot.

  Bernard remembered it well. It began when he and his scientific comrade, Darren Parsons, were working for Outer Limits, the leading aerospace company. By the early 2050’s OL had put a colony in space, mined the ocean floor, and resurrected fifty-seven extinct species. Meanwhile, CERN, attempting to restore an ionosphere irradiated by World War III, implored the World Council to mandate Bernard and Darren’s participation.

  To avoid the lengthy governmental procedure, Outer Limits CEO Angelika On offered to “loan” her top two employees. The fierce Scandinavian had another reason: OL wanted CERN’s resources for a secret project operating from November 2085 to April 2086.

  “Angelika, we’ve been here five months, FIVE MONTHS. What you’re asking us to build, in secret, mind you, it’s...” Already exasperated, Bernard fought to keep his composure. “It’s just not enough time. Darren’s not going to like that... not at all. Leaving sooner when he only has days as it is. You know he’s working on PF designs.”

  At first the voice at the other end was cool and soothing. “While I certainly understand your concerns, I DON’T CARE, BERNARD! Circumstances have changed. Get him back here today. I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Yes, ma’am...” His tone communicated his disgust for a decision he was not—not—going to argue with.

  The call’s abrupt finale left him unbalanced. Abandoning the delicious chocolate pastry, a long standing afternoon treat for the science guru, he departed the cafeteria.

  Despite his soured mood, moving through the curved hallways, he couldn’t help but admire the canvases lining the walls, each honoring his fellow scientists’ journey to Mars, and marking it as their new home.

  “We were there once, will be there again, and soon...”

  The corridor leading to his office displayed a sleek array of future tech. There were gadgets of all kinds, working and non-working, functional prototypes as well as theoretical models, all of which any good scientist should own, but the public would consider incomprehensible.

  A man with unruly silver hair and a colorful plaid button-down tucked neatly into his jeans sat in his chair. Unaware of Bernard’s dour state, visible excitement coursed through him.

  “Hubert, great. I want to show you my modified calculations for the singularity capture.”

  “Ah, D, yes, let’s have a look. Did you stabilize the quark stream during stage 4?” There was a slight lording to his tone.

  “Oh, yes. The new math solves it. I bet William couldn’t even do this.”

  “Much as I find it endearing how academic rivalries never die, I doubt that. William is the better mathematician, you know.”

  “Right. Just like Iron Man was better than Captain America? Yes, Stark could hold the Gauntlet, but, be honest, that hardly makes him superior to the good ole stars and stripes.”

  Momentarily enjoying a snarky analogy worthy of their shared love of early 21st century comics, Bernard rolled his eyes. Unfortunately, there were more somber things to discuss.

  “D, Angie called. She wants you back, as in today, now—like the Borg Queen calling her ships back to the nest.” He finished with a halfhearted wink.

  He expected Darren to be displeased, but the man looked ill. He was shaking, as if being slowly consumed by a mix of anger and regret.

  “She can’t do that, Bernard, not now...”

  CERN was where black holes were contained, antimatter researched, the fringes of knowledge pushed everyday. Bernard understood his friend’s frustration. No matter how cool or future tech the Outer Limits facility was, it was not, and never could be, CERN.

  They talked, and talked more, until Darren was calm enough to agree to a change in plan.

  Just before dusk, the low sun’s beams cast dramatic shadows down causeways carved by ancient glaciers. Bernard zoomed along in his electric sports car, the crown jewel of ingenuity in 2086, a gleaming, turquoise Newton 2001.

  Having left the main collider facility, he was headed to the airstrip when a burst of light blanketed the world. Before he could react, a shockwave tossed the Newton 200 off the road, slamming it against a rock embankment. His head cracked against the doorframe. The light dissipated, leaving only darkness.

  Bernard woke to sirens and a stench of melted stone. It was night. The sky barely illuminated by a smoke-obscured moon, he couldn’t see clearly. Trying to remember the warning signs of a concussion, he fumbled for his glasses, but everything he touched was broken glass. Blood dripped down his arm and onto his fingertips. The crunch of boots on the radiating dirt felt imaginary. “Over here! Found him!” Following the grinding of metal against asphalt, three men, paramedics, having wrenched the car door free, came into view.

  “If he’s bleeding internally, we shouldn’t move him. We’re out of stabilizing packs and there’s nowhere to bring him anyway. The hospital’s gone. Nearest medical center is Geneva, and we can only assume there’s hundreds, if not thousands of wounded.”

  The dizzying burst of a flashlight beam made him vomit. Somehow, Bernard managed to reach out and grasp a leg. “What… happened…?”

  “Sir, not sure. Best guess so far is an antimatter containment failure… a big one.” “...damage?” The paramedic choked. “Damage? Sir... CERN’s gone. You’re lucky… this is about as close to campus as you can get and still…”

  His brain splitting, Bernard croaked, “Gone? Where’s… Darren? Dr. Parsons? Other… survivors?”

  Their dark looks gave him the answer before he heard it. “Sir, there weren’t any. The campus was vaporized. All that’s left is a hole.”

  Bernard felt as if his sanity had reached the event horizon of a black hole. His friends, the engineers, the physicists, the geniuses and savants, techies and support staff, all their work, gone. It was a nightmare. It had to be. If he could just fall asleep, maybe he’d wake from it...

  “He’s losing blood. Screw protocol, we have to get him to Geneva stat. This is Dr. Bernard Hubert. If anyone’s worth a medivac, he is. Grab him.”

  The faces above him morphed and blurred. It was a dream; had to be, because he was watching, from somewhere safe and far, his own body lifted onto a stretcher and taken to a nearby helicopter.

  After a senseless, unknown duration, a stern man with a cold, analytic look emerged from the blur. Bernard had just about realized it was a medical surgeon before a mask engulfed his sight, and it went dark again.

  What was it? Hours? Days? Weeks? No way to measure time without a reference. It was peaceful, though, until warm light and self-awareness dawned together, swiftly followed by excruciating pain. Groaning, he again instinctively reached for his glasses and again couldn’t find them. Someone did, though. Firm yet gentle hands stayed his own as he placed them on his face.

  Lisa, his wife, came into focus. Before he could make out anything more, she enveloped him in a crushing hug. He could tell through how long and tightly she held on that something was wrong. He could feel her start crying, but any sound was dampened by her long hair and her head buried in his shoulder.

  An eternity later, she let go, her figure focusing through the lens in front of Bernard’s eyes. By the looks of her, she’d been crying a long, long while.

  “Lisa, I had a nightmare. CERN…”

  “Bernie, thank god! The doctors weren’t sure you’d…”

  Her sobs were no longer muffled, but they choked any words. Her tone made one th
ing clear: It wasn’t a nightmare. CERN, everyone, including Darren, was gone. Awareness imploding his mind, his thoughts spiraled darkly.

  “It should have been me.”

  Pulling herself roughly together, Lisa ushered in a skinny, redheaded woman. Bernard thought he should know her. When he realized he did, he thought, “Oh, no.”

  “Bernard! Thank god!” Lily Parsons flung herself on him, then sobbed along with Lisa. Some automated portion of himself briefly detached from his pain long enough for him to say, “Lily, I’m sorry.... I’m so sorry about your father.”

  “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t…”

  His eyes filled with sorrow and despair. “No, you’re wrong. I could have. He was supposed to go back to OL, but he was so close to a breakthrough on the black hole stabilization, so upset, I convinced him to stay. I said I would deal with Angie. He’s dead because of me.”

  Her frown made the tears run down her cheeks. “Outer Limits?” Lily looked from Lisa, to Bernard, and back to Lisa—not knowing what to think. “What do you mean?”

  “We were working on a top secret… I can’t say, and it doesn’t matter, Lily. It should have been me.”

  She blinked several times, processing the information. She recoiled, glaring at him, her sadness quickly turned to rage. Furiously wiping tears from her eyes, she seemed on the verge of speaking, yet never finding the words.

  Lisa put a hand to her shoulder, but Lily shrugged it off. Face full of loathing, she ran out the door. Bernard wanted to do something, but, heart and mind thoroughly drained, all he could manage was to tumble back into a deep sleep.

  He awoke again the next day. Lisa still by his side, he’d never appreciated her more. Lily was gone, just as well. He couldn’t face her, not yet at least. A knock signaled the entrance of another visitor, a sleek woman with silky hair and crimson lipstick.

  “Dr. Hubert, I’m Searcher Jones, from the World Council Scientific Investigation team. Naturally, we have some questions.”

  She moved swiftly, circling behind the nurses and gesturing for them to leave. As they did, she came ominously close to the bedside, ignoring Lisa’s plasma-cutting glare. Searcher waited for the door to click shut before barraging him with questions.

  “Sir, what happened in there? What were you working on? Why were you the only one departing CERN at precisely the time of the incident?”

  Instantly Lisa was standing, one hand on Bernard’s arm, as she partially shielded his body from Searcher Jones. Exhausted as Lisa was, she rallied, her defenses were up. This line of questioning was dangerous nonsense.

  “Is my husband being accused of something?”

  In a moment of disbelief Bernard looked up to Mrs. Jones, then clutched Lisa’s hand, looked to her, and simply said, “I was going home.”

  As he lay unconscious, Searcher Jones and Lisa Hubert each tried, unsuccessfully, to have the other removed.

  “BERNARD!”

  A reverberating shout from the hallway proclaimed the arrival of his frantic mother, Minerva. Before the echo faded, she burst in, pushed past Searcher and Lisa and sat beside her son. Surprisingly, he remained asleep, hours passing before he roused and met her eyes. “Mim, they’re all…” Bernard couldn’t get himself to say anyone else’s name. “Darren is gone.”

  Then he said something entirely unexpected.

  “Aliens. Had to be. Sentient extraterrestrials. Nothing else makes sense. The containment had safety redundancies; magnetic field generators, an independent chemical battery system, all tested against any possible threat. Something had to make the antimatter stop behaving like antimatter. The only way to do that would be a quantum event so specific it had to be designed by an intelligence. Humans don’t have that kind of quantum disrupting technology. If we did, I’d have designed it.“

  Mim and Lisa had no idea what to say. Searcher Jones did:

  “Is this a joke?”

  “No, let me rephrase. Do you expect me to believe the incident, which you just so happened to avoid, was caused by aliens? Even if that absurdity were true, why attack CERN? Why not hit weapons stockpiles and military bases?”

  Not used to being doubted, Bernard crossed his arms. “If you were competent, you’d realize CERN was the most valuable place on the planet. No one else was working on antimatter fields, propulsion drives and black hole research, not even Outer Limits. Their work was of such importance, they had to buy, beg, borrow, or steal the Earth’s best and brightest to make any of it happen.”

  Searcher Jones didn’t seem to hear, or, for that matter, want to hear. “You take us for fools? Four-thousand experts dead and you have the gall to blame aliens? We will do a full investigation, and I’ll be reporting your disrespect and utter lack of cooperation.” Swiftly as she came, she left, her angry whispers of “aliens” following her down the hall. He knew where this was going, and it wasn’t going to end well. Bernard wished he’d been more diplomatic, but he could barely think. Looking to his wife and mother for reassurance, he said, “Ignorance in the face of unwanted truth is truth within itself.”

  Unnerved, Lisa and Minerva gripped his hand, tears engulfing their faces. As he, once again, fell asleep, he realized they thought he’d lost his mind.

  The service woman peered out the control room door to see what was taking so long. “Sir… are you coming?”

  “Yes, Amy. Sorry to keep everyone waiting. I’ll be there in a moment—promise.”

  Bernard gazed at the vast scenery around him. Distant as the last six years seemed, the heartache of Darren’s death was as real as ever, driving him through the work.

  He patted a small cube-like device in his pocket. As he moved towards the hundreds awaiting him in the cathedral-sized space only doors away, he murmured—

  “This is for you, Darren.”

  1 Newton 200

  The 7th iteration of the Newton Fully Automated Sportscar. Electric powered with 2500-3000 km range. By car designer Douglass J. Newton.

  Two

  The Voidwhisperers

  Outside the lounge windows, asteroids floated in a miraculous dance, backdropped by the starry void of space.

  Kruktusken, a blue skinned Dragsan, narrowed his eyes. “I hate this job.”

  Marukjoy, a Drotean, from the 9th Sector’s Kramer de la Ku1 replied, “Oh, stop complaining. You can’t beat the view. We could be overseeing that mining operation in the Agrippa Trench2. Now, that would suck barkle3 tentacles.”

  Kruk trilled his vague agreement. “True, but two turns4 and this still feels more like glorified babysitting than protecting the Alliance from barbaric would-be space conquerors. I mean, I’ve been alive longer than Earth has had fusion.”

  Maruk, as he preferred to be called, leaned back to evaluate his position on the gobbletek holo-game. “Don’t forget, they kill for fun. Even used nuclear weapons on themselves.”

  “Well, it’s not like they’ve annihilated the species.”

  “Exactly. We’re here, because they still are.”

  The bored Kruk balked. “Please. Even by GSA standards, Earth’s progress is slow. My father’s a Prime and even he says so. I mean, they’ve remained Class-T for three reviews now.”

  Those on primitive worlds believing in sky-judges were close to the truth. The Galactic Star Alliance5 searched for, protected, and evaluated them. A Class-T, or Diminishing Lifespan Planet, required three conditions: galactically detectable tech, planetary scale conflicts, and a failing ecosystem. It was a perfect storm, indicating the high likelihood of violent expansion to other planets.

  Pushed to the brink, Class-T’s inevitably become convinced that, to quote the guide, the only path to survival is to populate and terraform as many planets as possible, regardless of indigenous species.

  Too dangerous to engage, they’d be reassessed every 55 turns. Improved resource balance, interplanetary travel potential, and a strong preference for diplomacy, could earn an upgrade to Class-S: Safe for Future Expansion. Further improvement, evalua
ted every 10 turns, might grant first contact.

  “If your dad feels that way, why station you as a babysitter?” Maruk was always happy to poke Kruk’s privileged streak.

  The Dragsan’s blue skin flushed purple. “Because… well… it was this or the outer rim of the Alpha Centauri… I mean Quadlox6. Damn! We’ve been here so long I’m using their primitive mapping terms. Plus, a quarantine rotation will look good for my move to higher government on Mijorn7.”

  “Not me. I’m going to be the greatest fighter pilot this side of Tatooi…”

  “If you reference Star Wars one more time...” Kruk smacked the table. “It’s like every other phrase with you. I swear, human entertainment will rot both your brains! Mine, too, if I keep hearing about it!”

  Thankfully, Kruk had rotated out of linguistics, but Maruk was tasked with reviewing their media for peaceful or destructive trends, particularly anything involving space travel and species interaction. So far, they hadn’t been selling themselves particularly well.

  Maruk chuckled. “But their interpretation of galactic life is so hilarious. Besides, if they really are so slow, I’ll need something other than playing gobbletek to pass the time.”

  Gesturing surrender with seven fingers, Kruk grunted. “I know. They’ve got me monitoring extrasolar probes that make woofha slugs8 seem fast. 34,000 turns to reach the nearest star, useless bricks within another 50.”

  In a Drotean9 expression of displeasure, yellow feathery tufts emerged from Maruk’s neck. His eyes turned orange while the skin beneath them and around his ears went dark and hardened into scales. “Now you’re complaining that your job is easy?”

  Kruk deflected, “My point, before we went off on this magnificent tangent, is that the Nova system’s status isn’t changing anytime soon. I just don’t understand why so many resources are being wasted on a whole lot of nothing.”