GENERAL NALANI KEAH
Perfect blackness. General Keah had never seen anything like it. Not just dark like a night on Earth, because the glitter of starry skies always provided at least fragments of hope. The huge shell that encompassed the Onthos star system was perfectly black, reflecting nothing from the myriad stars outside the impossible obsidian sphere. The darkness was as deep as that of a sightless man who was blindfolded, then sealed in a chamber deep within a cave. Yes, that was the kind of black she saw.
“Still nothing new, General,” said Sensor Tech Saliba.
“I don’t expect to find a welcome mat or a coffee shop, but we have to be thorough—we came all this way.” Keah kept staring at the screen; such blackness made her wonder whether the transmitters were malfunctioning.
The seven Ildiran warliners continued their traverse while the Kutuzov took its own route up and over the pole in a complete orbit around the englobed system. The opaque shell was perfect, seemingly impenetrable and several astronomical units across, an infinite field of hexagonal plates. So far, the exploratory group had spent two days skimming and crisscrossing the Dyson sphere, sending sensor pulses, trying to find any kind of signal. But the shell was as silent as it was black. Keah’s crew dropped limpet probes against the black plates, but they acquired no readings whatsoever. Nadd sent reports back via telink, so the rest of the Confederation and the Ildiran Empire knew what they had found.
Keah said, “I’d love a can opener so we could see what’s left inside.”
Adar Zan’nh agreed, and the next step was obvious. With more limpet probes scattered around the shell to detect vibrations or shock waves, the Kutuzov fired a single jazer pulse into a black hex plate. No effect. Railgun projectiles were launched next, then heavy conventional explosives. The limpet probes barely detected the vibrations.
Frustrated, but expecting this would be a tough nut to crack, Keah leaned back, turned to her weapons officer. “Mr. Patton, indulge yourself—open fire with all the conventional weapons you’ve got and see if we can make a dent. This thing seems to be made of the same material as the nightshade on Theroc.”
The Kutuzov blasted away, and space around them became a storm of recoil shock waves and incandescent explosions—none of which resulted in so much as a nick in the interlocked hexagonal plates. The Solar Navy warliners spread out and did the same, bombarding the surface of the shell, hoping to split open the seam between two adjacent plates.
When the Ildirans and the Kutuzov had exhausted all primary weaponry options, Keah and Zan’nh discussed options over the comm. They both knew the next step. “Time to try the laser cannons, Z. Our ship’s equipped with a full battery, and I expect your seven warliners are as well.”
“We were prepared to use the new weapons against the Shana Rei,” Zan’nh said. “This seems a good opportunity to test their effectiveness in a calm environment.”
The eight battleships backed off to a conservative distance and focused their laser cannons, while the commanders chose specific aim points.
Mr. Patton proposed a targeting grid, and each of the ships chose a particular hexagonal segment where they would concentrate their firepower. Full-strength laser cannons lanced out with streaks of blinding fire. Keah’s eyes ached despite the heavy filters on the bridge windowport.
As the bombardment continued, the General said, “If this doesn’t work, Z, we’ll let loose with our sun bombs. We know they worked against the nightshade. I just wish we had the new designs Dr. Krieger is building.”
“Your new sun bombs may be superior, but the previous designs were certainly sufficient. That should be our last resort, however. I am reluctant to use them unless absolutely necessary. We have a limited number. Laser cannons can be recharged, but once the sun bombs have been used, they cannot be replenished until we return home. Should we encounter the Shana Rei…”
Saliba looked up from her screen. “Something’s happening, General.”
Under the laser bombardment, one of the black hex plates crumbled and collapsed, falling inside the vast shell.
“Bingo,” Keah said. “Cease fire and let’s have a look.”
The laser cannons faded, and the black Dyson sphere swallowed up the afterglow, but the impenetrable black was now flawed—one missing hex plate out of the trillions that comprised it. A swatch of slightly different blackness against the unending darkness of the shell. The limpet probes detected no residual thermal emissions, gave no sign that the black material had melted or evaporated. The plate was simply gone.
Adar Zan’nh announced, “We are dispatching remote probes to look inside. We will share the transmission with you.”
Pinwheeling devices spat out of the Ildiran flagship and plunged into the tiny gap. The probes vanished inside, but transmissions came back, filling the main screen. Static crackled around the edges of the screen, and that was the only indication they were receiving telemetry from the devices. The interior of the shell was only more blackness.
“The sun is extinguished, then,” Keah said. “Not just enclosed.”
“Picking up no energy signatures whatsoever from inside. No transmissions from a civilization, no heat radiating from planets or the star,” said Saliba. “The whole system has been completely snuffed out.”
The Ildiran probes explored inside the shell for more than an hour, but the readings never changed. Silence. Darkness. Cold.
Keah paced the bridge, arms crossed over her chest. “Now that we know how to open the door, we need to pry it open wider, so we can send ships inside. I’m not going home until we have a full look around.”
The Kutuzov and the Solar Navy vessels began hammering at the surrounding hex plates, peeling them apart with full-strength laser cannons. After trial and error, Mr. Patton discovered that a precise blast at exactly the intersection joint hit the spot of greatest vulnerability, and several of the hex plates collapsed in at once. The seven Solar Navy ships used the same principle, and then like an avalanche, more than thirty hex plates broke apart and tumbled in like a crumbling mosaic, leaving a gaping maw in the black shell much larger than Keah had expected.
“That’s certainly big enough for a scout ship, General,” said Lieutenant Tait.
Keah looked around, measuring the opening. “Hell, it’s big enough for all our ships to go inside.”
“General, is that wise?” asked the first officer. “It could still be a trap.”
“Everything about this place could be a trap.” Keah looked up to the comm screen. “Z, what do you think?”
“I think we need answers, and the answers are inside. Rather than sending just a small scout party, I would prefer strength in numbers.”
Keah knew about the Ildiran phobia of being alone, and their fear of the darkness, so sending a tiny scout party into this utterly lightless prison would be a double whammy of a nightmare. “Then a compromise. I suggest the Kutuzov and one Ildiran warliner go inside, while the rest of the septa remains out here.”
On the warliner’s screen, Tal Gale’nh and his half-brother Rod’h stood beside the Adar in the command nucleus. Gale’nh asked, “What if the barrier reseals itself once we’re inside? We would be trapped.”
Zan’nh looked at him. “Then we blast our way back out with laser cannons, the same way we got in.”
“And we haven’t even tried the sun bombs yet. Plenty of options,” Keah said, convinced that they would do so before the end of the mission. She looked at the gap in the shell and shrugged. “We’ve gotta know.”
The CDF Juggernaut eased forward first, followed by the flagship warliner, and the two vessels entered the enclosed blackness. As they passed inside the enormous Dyson sphere, even Keah was uneasy. All running lights were illuminated, sensor scans extended—and still they saw nothing.
Outside, the shell had been impenetrably black, but the rest of the universe held countless stars. Inside the shell, though, all outside light was entirely gone—no stars, no reflections whatsoever. Their forward running lights and intense blazers pierced the emptiness but found nothing to illuminate. The only change in the perfect blackness around them was the jagged hole through which they’d entered, from which they could see starlight pouring in, a bright patch against the overall black.
“Astronomy scans,” Keah ordered. “Let’s find the sun and the planets. They’ve gotta be somewhere.”
“That’ll be difficult, General,” said Saliba. “There’s no radiation, no emissions in any part of the spectrum. It’s like looking for a black dot against a black background.”
Keah raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry, Mr. Saliba, I missed the part where your job was supposed to be easy. Look for subtler indications. Unless the Shana Rei erased the Onthos system from existence, down to the last atom, the bodies still have gravity, don’t they?”
“Yes, General,” said the sensor tech, and set to work.
The star itself was the easiest to find, the largest gravity well. After the flagship warliner and the Kutuzov dispatched resident gravitational probes, they found the Onthos sun—or what was left of it, an enormous cinder of burned-out and collapsed material. All nuclear reactions shut down, the remnants held together only by mass and gravity but generating no energy at all. The star was a black sphere inside a black shell.
“It does not seem possible,” Adar Zan’nh said. “My scientist kith assure me, it is not possible.”
“Good to know,” said Keah. “Otherwise, I’d believe my own eyes.”
On the screen, artificial points lit up. “High-res grav sensors have pinpointed three planets inside the sphere, General,” said Saliba. “Two terrestrial planets, one too small and close in to be worth much of anything, a Mercury analog. Farther out, at the very edge of the Dyson sphere, there’s a dark and cold gas giant.”
“No other terrestrial planet?” Keah asked.
“Yes, there’s one at the right orbital distance, with the proper mass, to be in the habitation zone.” She paused. “I think that’s the Onthos homeworld.”