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Ten minutes later, a shirt and regular pants had replaced my pajama togs. I had washed my face and Astrid put on some coffee as the equivalent of orange juice. I sipped the coffee as I sat down before the screen again.
“So, do we have a hint about who or what hit the Terlor System?”
“We have a little more than a hint. Just beyond the system there is a sphere five hundred-mile big. Maybe a hundred miles thick. It looks like a long, solid rock. We suspect it may be connected with the destruction.”
“A rock? Since when has a rock attacked someone?”
“This is more than just a rock. We don’t believe it is from our galaxy. It is made of a substance that we can’t define. It doesn’t show up on any of our scanners,” Belen said.
“Really? Never heard of anything like that before.”
“We have scopes in that section of space. If we look through the scopes, we can see it. But there’s nothing but empty space on our scanners. But we know for certain that it recently passed through the Terlor system. We think it caused the destruction, although for what reason we have no idea. If it produced that much destruction, obviously it can’t be just rock. Some weapons have to be inside.”
“Could it be a ship instead of a sphere? A spaceship?”
“Our best scientists think that’s doubtful. But there are ships out there: two ships are flying with the sphere. We think they are totally artificial. No sentient life forms. Robots, perhaps. Androids, maybe. But nothing human or humanoid.”
“Odd.”
“That’s one way to put it. There’s something else odd too. We don’t know what the outer shell is made of, but it’s the hardest substance we have ever seen; I don’t understand why there are two ships around it. The sphere doesn’t need protection. I can tell you a lot more when you and Astrid arrive here. I have a ship on the way to pick you up. You’re getting the light speed treatment.”
The light speed treatment left your ears ringing. And gave you the time zone rush. I felt dizzy and disoriented when Astrid and I walked into Belen’s study a number of hours later. Astrid, with her bright smile and cheery demeanor, looked fine. She did two minutes of complaining about being yanked away from vacation and then her basic merriness took over. Although she did note she would personally rip to shreds the sphere, ship or whatever it was that had disrupted our idyllic beach stay.
I appreciated our beach house even more because there were three feet of snow around Belen’s headquarters. Why she wanted to locate on the top of a mountain continued to baffle me. She stood before a mega-screen with what I guessed was the sphere on it, floating through the blackness of space.
“It doesn’t look impressive,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t. Currently it looks like a big rock traveling slowly. But after it moved through the Terlor system, nothing survived. It’s passing through another solar system now, but none of the eight planets can support life. The first three are too hot and the next five make the Arctic look like the Bahamas.”
I focused on the not-impressive big rock. It wasn’t rugged like meteors. The outside looked smooth, even polished. Light brown sheeny with stripes of white. Long and wide. And that was it. Below it, a silver spaceship flew. It was so small I couldn’t make out any details.
“It doesn’t show up on any scanners?” Astrid asked.
“No, that continues to be puzzling.”
“Whatever it is, it can’t be artificial,” Astrid said. “Some race, some aliens, created this and, we must assume, aimed it our way.”
“That is one theory Federation scientists are considering. But we can theorize all we want to. What we have to do now is destroy it. Since the rock is impenetrable to our best weapons that will be a problem.”
“Leave it to the Raiders. We can do it.”
I looked at my smiling, beaming wife. “You’re sounding really confident. This may be a bit tougher than it looks. And to be honest, it doesn’t look all that easy.” I turned back to Belen. “Velocity? What does it use to move?”
“Don’t know yet. No details either on possible weapons or place of origin, besides being from outside our galaxy,” Belen said. “Although, one hypothesis is that since we can’t destroy it from the outside, we’ll have to destroy it from the inside.”
“It has a hollowed out inside?”
“Yes. But that’s merely another guess. We’re getting a new ship ready for you. The George S. Patton. It’s the best my scientists could build. I hope it’s good enough to take down the sphere. Since there are two ships surrounding it, your buddy vessel will be the Nathaniel Greene.”
“Great general. Probably they wouldn’t have won the Revolutionary War without him. Who’s the captain?”
“Wade Markley.”
“Don’t know him, but he has a good reputation.”
I glanced back at the screen. The sphere hadn’t changed any.
“I’ll need the Cajun Asian,” I said.
The Cajun Asian is Kayli Neugen, good singer, consummate wit, and the finest astrophysicist on the nearest six solar systems. She is also one of Ryvenbark’s Raiders.
“I thought you would. She has already been contacted and is on her way here as we speak. She wasn’t as grouchy as you were when we buzzed her. She just smiled and said, ‘Must be time for another duo between me and Logan.’ The duet you two sang that night at the Celestial Stars is now famous far and wide. But you always did have a good singing voice.”
“So does Cajun, but right now I’m not interested in how good she carries a tune. She’s one of the best astrophysicists in science.”
“And a good shot,” Astrid said.
“Which appalled a few other astrophysicists, but the trait came in handy.”
Belen went back and sat behind her desk. “I’ve also sent for your right-hand man, Master Sergeant Rabelais. He was as grouchy as you were.”
“Sounds like Rab. Guy is the bravest man I’ve ever served with. Nothing scares him.”
“Nothing scares you either, honey,” Astrid said.
“Anything else you need?” Belen said.
“Yes, we should always know the enemy. You have any photos of what the three planets looked like after this thing passed through the Terlor system?”
“I’ve made you an office about three doors down from this one. I can send them to you, but there are not many. When I said there were just ashes left, that was a very accurate statement. There’s nothing to see. The few buildings that are left are in ruins. No atmosphere either. Whatever the sphere used, it not only killed men, women, children and animals, it also destroyed the atmosphere on the planet. When we say a ‘dead planet’, the statement is not an exaggeration. Nothing is living on the three planets now and nothing ever will in the future.”
“If I recall, at least one of the civilizations had space travel, but in a primitive form. They could travel to the other planets in the system, but nothing beyond that.”
“Correct; when the ambassador of the Oreganians came to Earth, one of our ships had to deliver him and his party. Their own ships were limited. The other two planets were even less advanced,” Belen said.
“How many inhabitants?”
“All together, about five billion.”
I shook my head. “It makes no moral or military sense to rain death on people who pose no threat to you... unless whoever created the sphere wanted to use it in all-out war. Which, I guess, is apparently what they did.”
“Why not? If this came from another galaxy, it would be difficult for us to counterattack, at least for the time being, but we do have some warp systems being designed...”
“We may need them. If this thing fails, whoever made it may be sending us other spheres of death too.” I looked at Belen. “Five billion?”
“Yes.”
I turned and started to walk to my office. After a half-dozen steps I stopped and looked back at the screen and the floating sphere.
“You annihilated three planets. I will stop you. The Raiders will stop you. After we’ll be through, we’ll find your creators and pay them back for what they’ve done.”
“Now who’s sounding confident?” Astrid said.