Earth Song: Etude to War (15 page)

Chapter 13

March 6th, 534 AE

Rasa Phoenix Shuttle, Bellatrix Orbit, Bellatrix Star System

Pip wasn't a natural explorer, even though he did enjoy an occasional trip into the rough. Especially if it wasn't a dangerous trip. For him it wasn't the true exploration of the unknown that Chosen scouts lived for. Too many chances to become a statistic. He enjoyed exploring to get at new technological goodies. So when Var'at's brother, Kal'at, pitched a little trip he was all in.

The Rasa were using one of the two new Phoenix shuttles they'd purchased from Groves Industries with a fair amount of the funds they generated from their food production factories on Remus. The galaxy was a hungry place, and the algae harvested from Remus' green seas were rich protein sources. Even the disgusting invertebrate squidge had their customers out among the starving masses.

“Minu's husband is a fine engineer,” Kal'at commented from the seat beside Pip. Compared to the Chosen's Lancer fighter/transports, the Phoenix were as large and roomy as a dirigible. At least ten times the size in raw displacement, it was more than that in interior volume.

Unlike the Lancer, the Phoenix didn't use as much interior space for structural support and equipment. The Phoenix wasn't a shape changer like the Lancer. Of course, it would also never fit through a Portal either. The fuselage alone was several times too big, and the variable swing-forward swept delta wings didn't help.

“He had help,” Pip pointed out. Kal'at shrugged a surprisingly human gesture. But the reptile was right. Compared to the Lancer, the Phoenix was the lap of luxury. Damn thing even had cup holders in the armrest. “How much did these set you back?”

“A few months revenue from the squidge harvesting operation.” Pip whistled but Kal'at shrugged again. He might not have had a full grasp on how to use the gesture, Pip thought. “But now we don't have to move around Remus with the swamp boats as much. More efficient. And delivery of finished shipments to the Portals on Bellatrix are many times more efficient.”

“Sound economic sense,” Pip agreed.

“Yes, and now we get to go exploring on our own!”

The shuttle carried five that day. In addition to Pip and Kal'at, there was a Rasa pilot and two of Var'at's soldiers, just in case. The shuttle was just maneuvering, and outside through the thick moliplas windscreen was their first view of their destination: a massive block of glassy obsidian seven thousand kilometers in diameter.

“On approach to Romulus low orbit,” the pilot told them.

“It is amazing you have lived on this world for five centuries and not really explored either moon.”

It was Pip's turn to shrug. “We ended up reverting to a Bronze Age society for a century or so before the Tog came back and helped lift us up by our bootstraps. After that, we had better things to do with the few orbital craft we could borrow. Even though, I found references to three expeditions here in the last century.”

“Plant the flag and walk around,” Kal'at summed it up accurately.

Pip nodded.

“A shame you did not have better technology.”

“We still don't know if there is anything there worthwhile.”

“Your Lilith on the Kaatan seems sure.”

A month ago Lilith had come back from one of her deep space sojourns. Something she apparently did when she was bored. As she approached Bellatrix, Romulus had temporarily eclipsed the big life bearing planet. And in that moment her sensors picked up a power signature from that moon. She’d analyzed it from orbit for days before passing on the news to Minu, who’d decided it was the perfect sort of thing for the Rasa to undertake. Since Kal'at and Pip worked together on numerous projects, they tapped him to help.

“She's been wrong before,” he cautioned. As they entered orbit Pip removed his personal tablet, one of the sleek crystalline models made by the Kaatan. He much preferred their superior computer power and memory storage.

He accessed the files Lilith had made for their mission. A trio of energy signatures on the surface of Romulus. They surrounded a six thousand meter mountain at equidistant points of a triangle. With the computer's assistance, she guessed the energy was likely surplus heat from a buried energy source. It was tantalizing to imagine what might require an energy source like that.

The majority of Concordian energy-consuming systems used rechargeable electro-plasma capacitors, or EPC. They used advanced superconducting capacitors to hold plasma state power almost indefinitely. But whatever was hidden under the basalt of Romulus had a self-producing power generator. Bellatrix hadn't been inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years, and for good reason. The sun was old and entering the later stage of its life.

Even though human scientists on Earth believed it was young because it was a blue-white star of spectral class B2 III, it turned out the star was an overachiever, burning through its fuel too quickly. Its destiny was to flare, burning out all the inner planets and baking their home to a cinder. Not a good candidate for a colony. Ted and Bjorn were both certain the Lost had moved their world out farther into the lifebelt several times in the distant past. There was some archaeological evidence to support the theory. But how do you move an entire world?

The Phoenix settled into orbit over the mountain situated at the center of the three energy signatures.

“Commencing sensor sweep,” Pip told them as he accessed the improved sensor pod the Rasa had installed before they’d left Remus.

Lilith grudgingly admitted that the one area her Kaatan fell short was its sensor and science capabilities. “We are a ship of the line,” she tersely replied to Pip's amusement. “The People utilized specially equipped scientific vessels, should the need arise.”

The sensors were the best that could be purchased in the Concordia without raising too much curiosity. They were geological sensors by design. Pip had done a little tweaking with the emitters to give them some more punch. Now he trained the systems at the mountain and let them have full power. The results were surprising.

“Nothing,” Kal'at said from his seat where he simultaneously reviewed the telemetry. “It is a volcanic mountain formed more than a billion years ago. The three energy readings appear to be thermal in nature. Possibly old core sample sites?”

Pip considered for a minute, letting the system run redundant scans up and down the spectrum. Everything matched the profiles. The planet was geologically dead, the core cold. Its composition didn't match Bellatrix, so that meant it was a wanderer, probably captured in the ancient days as the solar system was forming. Thinking of the solar system tickled something at the back of his mind. The computers installed in his skull worked at the orderly storage of his reorganized mind.

“This is wrong,” he said finally.

“I do not see what you mean,” Kal'at replied, pointing at the screens. “The data is conclusive.”

“Right, too conclusive. It is a textbook case, would you not say? Identical to a million small planets floating around the galaxy. Only one problem, this one is orbiting Bellatrix.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“There were similar moons in our home solar system. Some were around large gas giants. Those in close orbits were all extremely geologically active.”

“But this one is not.”

“Yes, but it should be. This moon is in far too low of an orbit, Bellatrix exerts massive tidal forces against it.”

Pip called up a program and quickly ascertained the numbers. Then he added in the crossing orbit of Remus and they became even more extreme as the lateral forces were added in. “This moon is being flexed like a lump of dough, yet there is no geological activity?”

“Maybe its structure is resisting those forces?”

“Maybe some moons would, but this one shouldn't. The primary composition is reading as obsidian base. The damn thing is basically a big glass ball. Tell me, what should we really be seeing?”

“Massive tidal fracturing, and probably a liquid core,” Kal'at conceded at last.

Pip nodded.

“Then what is this we see?” Kal'at asked.

“Subterfuge,” Pip concluded. “Take all the active sensors offline.

Kal'at manipulated the controls then nodded.

“Okay, let’s bring up the passive sensors. Slowly.”

For an hour they orbited the jet black surface of Romulus as Pip tested his conclusion. Finally he had enough to be sure. “Sensor echoes,” he said and showed Kal'at the data. “Two hundred of them equally spaced all over the planet.”

“A stealth network?” Kal'at was incredulous. “The cost and effort would be enormous.”

“Yes, and done long before we ever moved here.” With the stealth field mapped, Pip began to work at subverting its effects. More hours passed as they orbited and the real picture of Romulus began to emerge; a planet that was considerably more active in its core than the false images fed through the network made it appear. But not as active as the tidal data would suggest.

“Why is it still so stable?”

“I believe the tidal forces are being harnessed.” Pip punched some numbers into a program and got a result. “If I'm even close, then this suggests an energy surplus of seven times ten to the seventeenth annually. That is a hundred times more power than our planet uses.”

“One hundred and twenty two times, actually.”

“So much power! What is being done with it?”

“Let's find out, shall we?”

* * *

The shuttle settled to the basalt surface of Romulus without a sound. The moon's one-third gravity was more than enough to hold them steady against the shining ground. Pip observed the surrounding for a few minutes through the shuttle's various cameras. The landscape was pocked with craters and depressions around their landing spot. In those craters were pools of dust. The planetoid had no atmosphere.

To the port side, the land sloped upwards towards the distant peak of a low mountain. Lighting was stark. In a few hours, the sun was be eclipsed behind Bellatrix for hours.

“What is your decision?” Kal'at asked. The two soldiers and the pilot watched Pip with detached curiosity.

“This is your expedition,” Pip reminded him.

“And you're the expert,” Kal'at retorted.

“I suppose.” He stared at the monitors for another minute to buy some time. The energy signal was a dozen meters away. Nothing could be seen from where they sat. They'd have to go outside. “I really don't like this idea.”

The Rasa were halfway through donning their pressure suits before Pip even began removing his own from the locker in the rear of the cabin. Another human might easily recognize Pip's body language and realize just how unhappy he was at the prospect of going EVA. The Rasa just took it as unfamiliarity with the equipment and once they were finished suiting themselves and checking each other they moved in to speed Pip's suiting up.

Anyone on old Earth would think a member of the Chosen, whose stated mission involved traveling to far-flung corners of the galaxy, to be well versed and practiced at using a spacesuit. The truth was, the Chosen only owned a handful of the devices. The Portals made for safe, easy travel from world to world without ever being exposed to space.

On rare occasions, a Chosen scout would don a spacesuit to investigate a decompressed space station where a curious Portal was located, but Pip had never worn a pressure suit before three days ago. A quick trip to Steven’s Pass had given him the basics from a scout instructor.

“Damn it, I'm a scientist, not an astronaut.”

Two of the Rasa soldiers checking the connections on his backpack exchanged curious looks. The word ‘astronaut’ had no translation.

His instructor had told Pip how lucky he was. “These suits are a quantum leap over what we used on Earth,” the jovial elder scout had said. Pip had wanted to ask him how he’d gotten to be a gray-haired man and still have five black stars on his sleeve. “In the old days, NASA spacesuits weighed over seventy kilos and were so cumbersome that if you fell over in normal gravity it was impossible to get up without help.”

“How interesting,” Pip had said with little real interest. He was being shown slide after slide of schematics and procedures for donning and maintaining the suits, in addition to emergency procedures.

“Isn't it? There are actually Concordia units that are only forcefields! You can float around in space with nothing on but your birthday suit.”

“Excellent. Give me one of those and I'll be on my way.”

“I'd love to, only we don't have any.”

Pip had rolled his eyes and grumbled.

“And even if we did, once it’s turned on you become a big ball floating in space. They don't cling to your skin, it just makes a sphere of air around you. We think they were emergency life support modules for space stations. Wouldn’t be much help for exploring.”

The lesson ended with tables and figures describing in graphic detail, the effects of vacuum on the human body and just how little time he would have to live, should the suit be breached.

Still, as the last connection was made and the suit powered up, he did his best to stem the feelings of panic that began to bounce around the insides of his sizable brain. At least it wasn't the damned Tactical Drive on the Kaatan. He would rather see how long he could live in a leaking spacesuit than go through that again with his computers turned on.