assistirfilmes Book 5: Chapter 60: Encounter
Book 5: Chapter 60: Encounter
Book 5: Chapter 60: Encounter
Icarus
February 2338
Wormhole network
After our failure at the DMZ system, we’d decided to visit another civilization at random while we tried to work out a strategy going forward.
This last one had been especially interesting. The locals had essentially colonized their entire system, from the hot-as-hell Mercury-type planet near their sun to the freezing example of Fimbulwinter at the edge of their Kuiper belt. In addition, every single moon was covered in structures, and every asteroid bigger than about a half kilometer in diameter seemed to have been hollowed out and spun up for gravity.
And all empty.
I was trying very hard to avoid the feeling that I was in some kind of Stephen King horror story, where perhaps a carnivorous clown had eaten everyone. But it was hard.
As we oriented ourselves to the local orbital plane, my external sensors started blaring. “Woo-hoo,” I yelled. “Action at last.”
“Celebration is premature,” Dae retorted. “Let’s make sure we survive first.”
A quick examination of the area via SUDDAR revealed a caravan of huge vessels on a trajectory that had them going between two wormholes. The wormhole they’d apparently exited was a hub connection, but a radial one that led inbound. The destination gate was also a hub, but we’d already determined that it led to the next hub spinwise.
We moved toward the caravan, but not so quickly or directly as to appear threatening. More of a “heading for the same gate” kind of vibe. I sent a gate-query frequency radio beam toward them, more in an act of desperation than anything. And I was rewarded with exactly what I expected: total ignore.
But we were now close enough for a SUDDAR scan. I sent out a full-power pulse and got back, well, very little. Most of the ship was quite visible in SUDDAR, and resembled any random space vessel—engines, maintenance, computer systems, et cetera. No passengers, though. There were spaces that appeared to be accommodations for living beings, but they were empty. So automated transports.
The surprise, though, was the area of the ship that had to be the hold. It was shielded. From SUDDAR. All I got back was a blank rectangular volume.
“I didn’t know that was even possible,” Dae said.
“Not a technology that we have,” I replied. “Cloaking, yes. Shielding? That’s a new one. I wonder what they’re hiding?”
“Assuming they’re hiding something. The shielding might be to protect the environment rather than the contents.”
I frowned at him. “What needs that level of shielding?”
“I don’t know. Ask them,” Dae retorted, waving at the video window.
Shrugging, I sent a plain-language query in Roanokian. And got the same response.
“That’s not really working either,” I said. “How about we follow?”
“Suits me.”
We hurried to get in line behind the caravan. In a few hours, they reached the destination gate and began parading through. Finally, it was our turn, and we followed the last transport vessel.
“Where—?” I exclaimed, perplexed. The caravan had disappeared, except for the vessel we’d been following.
“They’ve split up,” Dae said. Sure enough, the holotank tracking display showed each vessel heading for a different gate.
“None are hub gates. All local.” I rubbed my chin in thought. “Local deliveries?”
“Of what?”
With a sigh, I changed my heading to follow the vessel in front of us as it made a slow, ponderous turn. “Let’s find out.”
*****
We hadn’t been through this particular gate ourselves, so it was a bit of a twofer. The transport ship, for that was almost certainly its purpose, steered a conservative course for what turned out to be the home planet for the local civilization. Or rather, a space station in a geosynchronous orbit.
The in-system trip took about 30 hours, given that the transport didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry. On arrival, it cozied up to the space station and docked. The station was monster big, easily dwarfing the transport, which was no baby itself. I also noticed a fleet of smaller ships maintaining position around the space station. They seemed to be all of a type, as well.
“Guards?” Dae said.
“Not very intimidating-looking. They have more of a cargo-drone vibe, I think.”
“Ah. Maybe waiting for whatever the big ship is unloading.”
The unloading took about six hours. At the end of it, the transport unlinked and began moving in a stately fashion for the gate. At the same time, the smaller cargo drones began queuing up at different docks. That pretty much confirmed that whatever the transport had unloaded, everyone wanted some.
I decided to try again with the station. I beamed a greeting in Roanokian.
And received a reply.
I nodded, struck dumb with awe. In 1997, astronomers had discovered that something near the galactic center was shooting a plume of antimatter particles thousands of light-years to galactic north. And only to the north, which no one had an explanation for. The radiation given off when the antimatter interacted with normal interstellar dust and gas glowed at 511 KeV, the radiation signature of total annihilation.
“Well, now we know,” I said.
“Know what? The empire is getting antimatter from here, but we still have no idea what it is, other than a tremendous source of antimatter.”
“Enough to power an empire. And keep it running, apparently.”
Dae sighed. “Let’s look around. I’d hate to leave without finding out anything more.”
We engaged SURGE and swiftly overtook our escort. I kept my stellarium VR up, and I noted that Dae wasn’t expressing any need to re-corporate.
Sensors indicated we were still about ten AU from the fountainhead when we detected a communication over SCUT. We still hadn’t mastered the empire’s SCUT comm standards, so I cast around until I spotted a likely source for the transmission and sent a greeting via radio in Roanokian.
The source appeared to be a large space station, or possibly a small asteroid. It had all kinds of technological accretions, a cloud of small vehicles in parking orbits around it, and showed every indication of being the administrative center for the region.
A response came back immediately in the same medium. “Roanokian vessels, you have entered an interdicted area. This is the Central Antimatter Works for the Pan Galactic Federation. Unauthorized vessels are prohibited. Stop immediately or face impoundment of your vehicles.”
We stopped immediately and tried to display good intentions by reversing course for a short distance.
“Pan Galactic Federation,” Dae said. “That’s interesting. I wonder how accurate that is.”
“As accurate as our translations of Roanokian, I guess. Double-check the individual words, will you?” Without waiting for a response, I sent a message to the space station. “Can you supply a map of the stellar neighborhood that will keep us out of the interdicted area?”
“Star maps are available via Mapping Protocol, which is supported only through SCUT transmission.”
“Oh, for fuck sake,” Dae muttered.
I replied. “We do not know the standard communication protocols used by the Pan Galactic Federation. Can you give us the specs?”
In reply, the space station sent a series of extremely dense text files in Roanokian. A quick glance indicated that we’d been given not only the Mapping Protocol but also the Identification and Authorization Protocol, the Audio/Video/Other Communications Protocol, and a couple of other less relevant items.
“Finally, someone is being helpful,” I muttered. Then, to the station, “May we enter a parking orbit while we digest this?”
“Affirmative.”
And just like that, we were in business.
*****
“Seven light-years to Sagittarius A*, or to as close to it as we want to get. That’s seven years each way, Icky—so another fourteen years minimum before we report in.” Dae stood glaring at me, his fists literally on his hips in an unconscious parody of Mom when she disapproved of our choices.
“We’ve already been at this for almost thirty years, Dae. Plus the time we spent in normal space before we found the wormholes. We’ve long since disconnected from Bobiverse society. And it’s not like they’re expecting us.”
“Depends, doesn’t it? On whether our SCUT stations get into position and whether anyone’s listening when our radio message gets there. And then, radio silence. I don’t see Bill just shrugging his shoulders and moving on.”
“So how is that a bad thing? It means we’ll have follow-up.”
Dae sighed and looked deflated. “It comes down to what happened to the empire—”
“Federation.”
“Whatever. If it’s something we need to know about, and soon, this delay could be critical.”
“You’re kidding. You think we arrived on schedule to nip the danger in the bud just in the nick of time? C’mon, Dae, we’d switch off a movie if they did that.”
Dae grimaced and looked away. Then he said, “Okay, but once we’ve done this, we head straight back to Roanoke to report in to Bill, right?”
“You got it.” I grinned knowingly at him. He wasn’t fooling anyone. He wanted to go just as much as I did but needed to play the responsible clone.
We’d deciphered the texts from the administrative station, which were essentially identical to internet RFCs. A quick test netted us local star maps. Now we would be able to converse via SCUT when we needed to.
I did another test, asking the station if there were any biological entities on-site we could talk to.
“No.”
Well, that was terse. “How long since any were on-site?”
“That information is not available.”
Sigh. Not surprising, I guess. I gave Dae a lopsided smile, and we fired up the drives.