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Tekmann’s deep baritone voice came on the line. Cajun and I have passable singing voices, but when Tek belts out a song, it’s mesmerizing. Singing, though, is only his hobby, even if he probably could have made a living at it. But his expertise is weapons.
“Tek, I assume you have looked at the sphere.”
“Yes. An amazing structure. Never seen anything like it before.”
“Let’s hope we don’t see anything like it again. Any idea of how to stop it?”
“I hate to tell you this, sir, but as of now I have no idea at all.” The baritone voice sounded even lower than usual.
“Shucks, I was hoping you’d give me at least three options.”
“You can’t make an informed decision about an enemy unless you have some information. None of our scanners have given us any facts about this thing, major. When we first became aware of it, we thought it was a big rock in space. Right now all we know is it’s still a big rock in space. We can’t penetrate inside. For that matter, we don’t even know the substance it’s made of. A nice, polished rock.”
My voice had a note of exasperation. “Tek, if it’s just a rock, how could it have caused the death of three planets and annihilated the civilizations who lived on them?”
“Don’t know. I assume it has weapons, but we don’t know how it uses them. There’s no opening, no place to fire. There is no opening or port on the outer surface that might be used to launch an attack. It might be able to open a portal to fire but, if so, we don’t know where that portal is.”
“Federation scientists are guessing it’s hollow.”
“Maybe, but there still could be fifty miles of crust to get through.”
“Tek, if I sent an equator bomb at it, is there any way of predicting what the damage might be?”
“No, but I think there’s a very good chance it would flow right through the bomb and keep on its way without missing a beat. As I said, never seen anything like it.”
“How about a desert bomb? Drop in on a planet and mountains are leveled. So is everything else over two inches high.”
“Depends how heavy and how thick the outer core is. Doubtful it would work. Without getting overly technical, a desert bomb doesn’t really make a planet go poof. Not at first. Huge explosion that's for sure, but that begins a chain reaction and the chain reaction — although it only takes minutes — must be engaged to get the end result. The chain reaction keeps getting larger and larger. But there’s nothing on the sphere to chain react with. So I don’t think a desert bomb would work on the sphere. And that’s the most powerful weapon we have in our arsenal,” Tek said.
“You’re a fountain of good news,” I said.
“I’ll keep working on it.”
“Good. I need a lot of scientists working on this problem.”
I refilled my drink and kept glancing at the sphere. Maybe the Federation scientists were right in that we’d have to get inside to destroy it. Which left open the question: how do we get inside?
When the knock on the door came, I yelled ‘come in’. When the door opened, the six-seven Jerico Haldran came in. He had grown a goatee since the last time I had seen him. The black-and-gray beard looked good on him. He smiled as he made a smart salute.
“Major Ryvenbark, it’s been a long time.”
“So it has, Jerry. How are you?”
I shook his hand.
“Doing well. But haven’t had much excitement for a while. So when the call came through, I thought I’d sign up. You have a mystery to be solved, and I like solving mysteries.
“I’m glad you do. Sit down, Jerry. Did the Federation tell you what we’re facing?”
Jerico is skilled in any number of weapons, including old-fashioned knives and garrotes — although he has sadly noted that soldiers rarely get to garrote anyone in a high-tech war. He’s somewhat disappointed about that. But he also is a brilliant space engineer.
“Yes, told me about the sphere and about the three dead planets.” He smiled. “They always give you the toughest jobs, Logan.”
“But this time they promised a bonus,” I answered, smirking.
He laughed and looked up at the screen, which still was focused on the sphere. “I do understand their concern. They’re fighting the Creagers on one side of the galaxy and have this thing crawling up the other side. It’s not a position they like to be in.”
“Did they brief you on everything?”
“Yes, with all the information they had, but they have almost nothing.”
“True. And that’s what bothers me. Any preliminary thoughts on the sphere?”
“No. The thing came out of nowhere. We’re scrambling to find out any details, but as of yet it’s yielded no information. We’re going in blind, major,” he said.
“Like Lee at Gettysburg, and that’s not a good feeling.”
“Yes, but Lee was blind at Gettysburg because Gen. Stuart made one of his very few mistakes during the war. None of our people have made mistakes. They just can’t find anything.”
“Let me ask you something. Oh, would you like a drink?”
“Have any whiskey?”
“I do.”
I walked over to the bar, dropped two ice cubes in a glass and poured in the whiskey. I mixed a second glass for me, then handed the first glass to Jerry.
“There’s one thing that puzzles me. Well, there are actually many things that puzzle me about this sphere. One problem is it suddenly popped up, and destroyed three planets before we knew what hit them. But now it’s traveling slow, not even close to light speed. At the rate it’s going it will take years for it to reach the next solar system. If it wants to kill so much why not hurry up? If there’s an intelligence behind it, the slow speed makes no sense tactically. When it wiped out the three planets it had the element of surprise. The planets also had no defenses. But moving so slowly it lost the advantage of surprise. If it could move faster, say at light speed or warp speed, it could have attacked other planets before the Federation became aware of it. Now we’re mobilizing our defenses.”
“Or mobilizing Ryvenbark’s Raiders,” Haldran said.
“Yes. The creators of this object are highly intelligent. Why would they make a mistake like that?”
Haldran sipped his drink. “A good question. That thought had crossed my mind too. It’s a possibility that it can’t go any faster.”
“If that’s true, it would be difficult for the sphere to sneak up on us.”
“Yes, but if there’s nothing we have that can destroy it, it doesn’t have to sneak up on us. It’s flying death, so all we can do is wait for it, or see if we can flee to a planet out of its way. From the little we can tell, it may have been flowing in space for hundreds, or hundreds of thousands of years. As space objects go, the sphere is small, too small for our scanners looking into large areas of space. Or if we did spot it, it would be mistaken for space debris. If it’s been floating for hundreds of thousands of years, it has hundreds of thousands of more years to go. It’s in no hurry for the next solar system to show up.”
“But if that’s true, it could have been roaming not for thousands of years but hundreds of millions of years. At that speed how long would it take to cross galaxies? And why would any aliens point it toward us hundreds of millions of years ago?”
“Can’t answer that question either.” He shrugged. “Maybe millions of years ago the inhabitants of another galaxy determined this galaxy was a prime spot for life, and the aliens did not like crowds. They wanted the universe all to themselves.”
“I don’t like crowds either, but people in another galaxy are not going to bother me much,” I said.
“But the why is not our primary concern. We can worry about that later. Right now our number one priority is destroying it.”
I jumped up and grabbed my gun when the door almost flew off its hinges and banged on the wall.
“You still have great instincts, Logan. Congratulations.”
I sighed with relief and holstered the gun.
“Kayli. I almost killed you.” I turned to Haldran. “Do you know Dr. Kayli Neugen? She’s a lady who knows how to make an entrance.”
“Yes, she does. We’re old acquaintances.”
The Cajun Asian walked over and kissed Haldran on the creek. Then laughed and kissed me.
“Well, looks like I’ll be working again with two of my favorite guys,” she said. “What’s the status of the mission?”
“Same as it was. Nothing has changed,” I said.
She looked up at the screen. “So that’s our mysterious object, is it? Doesn’t look like all that much.”
“Sometimes looks can be deceiving.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I wonder who brought it here.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Beg your pardon?”
“The thing is slow. So I’m wondering who brought it here. It couldn’t have wandered from a nearby galaxy. The distance is too much of a factor. Natural question: who taxied it to our piece of real estate?”
I looked at Haldran. “It wasn’t a natural question for us. We thought it simply took a long, long time to get here. Looks like the thing could last forever just floating in space. Well, actually I thought that. Think Jerry was non-committal.”
“If that’s what happened, where are the navigational controls? Taking a trip that will take millions of years in a big universe... It’s very easy to get lost. One slight error and you are hundreds of millions of light years away from your target. Not an effective way to wage war.”
“So a thousand-mile long spaceship traveled near the outskirts of the galaxy, emptied its cargo and... went back home?”
Cajun nodded. “Possibly. Here’s a theory. There is a civilization in the next galaxy, a civilization that is composed of not-very-nice people. They are not like the folks in... say Tennessee in 1900. You know, going to church on Sunday, walking the park, going to ice cream socials. Let’s assume their not-so-nice counterparts in the galaxy beyond us have the technology to peek into the next galaxy down the street. We actually have that technology, but just haven’t bothered yet. Warp-speed probes. But they went exploring and discovered the next block over teems with life. But instead of being delighted, they are upset, murderously so. So they build a killing machine. But the problem is the darn thing can’t do warp speed; can’t even do light speed. It’s destructive, but it’s slow, much too slow to be of any use to them. But they have other talents besides creating death machines. They can build really, really big ships. A ship that could transport their death machine. So they do and they bring it over here and let it go. They have unleashed a weapon that they believe can’t be stopped, so they just sit back and wait for the destruction. We have ships that big, just in case.”
“Just in case of what?” I asked.
“Planetary evacuation. Haven’t had the need to use them yet, but we have them ready. The Federation has to make all type of contingency plans. I think we have three of them; our titanic class of vessels. So are you going to offer me a drink?”
I walked to the bar again, mixed her a drink and brought it to her.
“Brilliant,” I said. “A very good analysis.”
“One that we were too stupid to think of,” Haldran said.
“I think that could be expressed in a more diplomatic way,” I said.
“OK. Cajun showed our mental incompetence by her utter brilliance.”
“Yes. That sounds much better.”
“Thanks. It’s a theory, but I think it’s one that fits the facts,” she said, sipping the liquor. “But if you’re going to ask me how to stop it, I don’t know that yet.”
“Frankly, I was going to wait until tomorrow for that question. I’m taking one thing at a time.”
“That’s wise. When do we leave to get a closer look at it?”
“In about a week. Belen’s engineers are building us a new ship, the George S. Patton. They're tinkering around a bit, but it should be through in about seven days.”
“Will we have all our people here in a week?”
I nodded. “Never missed a deadline yet.”