Out Through the Attic (22 page)

EN
TROPY SE
ED

I wager it ignites the atmosphere. If we’re lucky, it’ll just wipe out New Mexico. If not, we could take out the entire planet. Any takers?”

Edward Teller—Los Alamos New Mexico, 1945

Dr. Pierre Dumonde took several quiet minutes to enjoy the view, for deep down he was aware of the statistical possibility, however improbable, that the next few minutes might be his last. If the experiment went awry, these moments would be suitable as final ones.

Although he couldn’t see it yet, Amaterasu Station’s spherical hull lay shrouded within a massive gravomagnetic bubble that curved particles and rays around it. The system effectively separated Amaterasu from the observable universe. For the few maintenance personnel aboard, a handful of pointless windows showed only the abyssal absence of perceivable color, being neither black nor dark. In that absence, a sane human most readily translated it into a short-hand concept of darkness.

Wedged between magnetic fields, Amaterasu maintained a relative position between Sol and Mercury at an altitude of 346 kilometers above the planet’s surface. Extending beyond the bubble, a crystalline array of nanovoltaic crystals surrounded the station in a virtually undetectable, fan-like curtain. Solar winds pushed against the curtain as if it were a transparent sail, helping Amaterasu maintain its position. However, every quarter of a Mercury day—44 Earth days—one man could see Amaterasu in brilliant, unparalleled glory.

Dumonde reclined comfortably in the single control chair within the observation module of Trinity Base, and the transparent hemisphere above him exposed a magnificent view few even knew existed. Ravine walls rose two-hundred meters above him, the first three-quarters of their surfaces coated with an almost fuzzy, meters-deep blanket of interlaced ice crystals. Trillions of water prisms reflected molten emerald and crimson patterns originating from the sparse aurora curtain above. Faint rivers of light drifted across the visible seam of sky above like a gossamer veil weaving itself amongst distant, feebly glowing stars lost mostly in Mercury’s glowing corona.

His mind drifted back to the first year of his doctoral program. Professor Shin had said something that always stayed with Dumonde: “
What a magnificent and awful glory is the realm of scientific discovery
.” Shin’s ancient, Chinese voice seemed to drift up out of the ravine and float off on a gossamer tendril shimmering above.

“Pierre? You ready?” Dr. Klein’s thick, elderly voice shattered Dumonde’s reverie through the cerebral comm-net. “The clock’s ticking, and Admiral Nace wants the detonation data with this rotation. You know what a hard-on he has for this thing. We received reports today that both Earth and Mars have assembled their fleets. What’s more, Nace says that the shipyard got orders for two-dozen more dreadnaughts from both factions. I guess they’re expecting heavy losses on both sides. This test could give Nace a stick big enough to keep anyone from threatening us.”

“Yes, of course,” Dumonde replied quickly. Activating the lift now.” He flicked his vision at the actuator suspended in his personal HUD, and servos deep under the module began raising the observation tower towards a shifting Mercurial sky. As the module rose beyond shimmering drapes of undulating ice, photons caught within Mercury’s fierce magnetism painted the rock-surfaces with increasing, scorched-white brilliance.

As thoughts of a second inter-planetary conflict loomed in Dumonde’s thoughts, a twinge of regret filled him. As a boy he’d always wanted to be just a physicist studying the nature of the universe. Instead, he ended up in weapons research for the Nagami Conglomerate. “Are the state-field generators on line?” he asked through the comm.

“Affirmative. Spinning up the hydrogen matrix now.” Heather Leary’s voice was a soothing balm to Dumonde’s regrets. “Magnetic seal is five-by-five and the osmium core is at .02 Kelvin. Hydrogen lasers are stable and perfectly encapsulating the core in a stable bubble.”

The two had spent the morning in love-making. They both knew the stakes, and they’d even discussed the possibility of disaster with today’s test, but all analysis put the odds at just shy of 10
7
to one against a mishap. They dressed and went to their stations to test-fire the first Entropy Bomb, a device designed to reduce target matter to absolute zero.

Dumonde checked his chronometer: 04:27:35, May 12
th
, 2328, with three minutes till Mercury was in a perfect transit position between Earth and Sol. It would also be at perihelion, its closest position to the sun. Nothing beyond Mercury’s orbit would be able to detect the detonation on Mercury’s surface, and the heat of the sun would limit the bomb’s efficacy.

The sun-facing side of the dome went black as the observation module cleared the ravine, reacting to the intense sunlight blazing 46,000,000 kilometers away. The white disk of the sun appeared nearly seven times larger than on Earth, its perimeter quivered with dancing solar flares.

Dumonde prepared for his private show. The array around Amaterasu, a dense but micro-thin lattice of perfectly aligned nano-crystals 2,000 meters across, was Trinity’s primary energy source as well as that of the Nagami Shipyards anchored in Mercury’s shadow. Seemingly transparent, the lattice captured photons with near-perfect efficiency and transferred the energy down past Amaterasu’s magnetic field where it was gathered then beamed to a satellite network. Every forty-four days Amaterasu would alter its position, keeping parallel with Mercury’s axial tilt. During this shift, the array would shudder lightly, and the array would blossom for only a few seconds.

Shiver.

“There,” Dumonde said with a smile. The interior surface of the dome shimmered in a kaleidoscopic rainbow as the dome-compensators struggled to factor the shifting patterns of shattered light. Dumonde looked over his shoulder through the still-transparent half of the dome, just making out the distant glow of Nagami’s lights.

The metal-rich crust of Mercury combined with an abundance of solar energy made Nagami a perfect facility for making starships. Transfer satellites around Mercury allowed Amaterasu to relay energy directly into Nagami’s core and Trinity directly.

Returning his gaze forward, Dumonde flicked his eyes over a macro, causing three rows of images to appear before him. The top-right image was a close-up of the device, which Heather had dubbed Skadi after the Norse god of winter. It looked like a car-sized appleseed made of black steel, discarded by gods to germinate and grow in Mercury’s harsh landscape.

The remaining top-row images showed views from recorders placed every 5 kilometers stretching away from Skadi. The middle row showed outer recorders placed every 500 kilometers away. The whole chain dotted a line across Mercury from the equator to the pole, in line with the Trinity’s observation pod 3,800 kilometers north. The bottom row showed views from Amaterasu and its transfer satellites. Only Amaterasu and three of the 8 satellites had a view of Skadi’s position, and each was focused to show a different area measuring from 10 to 500 kilometers wide.

Dumonde watched the clock tick down. Sixty seconds remained. “All monitors are live and we’re recording at ten thousand frames per second. How are we looking down there?”

“Everything’s in the green,” Klein said stoically.

“Still five-by-five, Dumonde. Think it will work?”

“I know it will work. The question is,
will it stop
?”

Kline chimed in. “You know that’s impossible, Dumonde.”

“Not impossible, just incredibly improbable…. Thirty seconds…. Good luck, everyone…. Ten…. Five…. Zero.”

“The mass is at absolute zero!” Heather shouted triumphantly.

The image of Skadi went black on a feed… then the next feed went black. More distant monitors showed a growing hemisphere of black expanding across Mercury’s surface. Another monitor went black, then another. The rate increased and the close-in monitors were gobbled up by the void in seconds. Amaterasu’s view showed an expanding black pupil in the eye of Mercury, growing on the surface directly below, and still the rate of growth accelerated.

“Oh Jesus,” Dumonde said horrified. “It’s not stopping.”

Amaterasu’s feed went black a few seconds later.

“My god,” Kline whispered, “It’s eating the planet.”

“What have we done?” Heather cried into the comm. “Gravomagnetics are off the chart!”

Numbers crunched in Dumonde’s sub-conscious and spat out an impossible reality. “It’s a singularity.” For the briefest of moments he felt a tug of gravity as memories of Heather, the aurora and his kaleidoscope painted a smile on his face.

He fell into the abyss with the rest of Mercury.

O O O

The all within slipped through non-space when the ship alerted the multi-consciousness to a massive, uncharted gravity well.

“
Anomalous singularity
,” the ship announced.

“Curious,”
the consciousness sang
. “Adjust course and track relevant events.
”

The ship skipped through real space gathering data on the anomaly from incept consumption of all planetary bodies.

“
Causal analysis
?” the collective queried.

“
The singularity originated at the perimeter of the stellar mass, apparently caused by null-entropic dense-matter-exposure within a hydrogen containment field twisted at the quantum level by conflicting gravity fields.”

“
Interesting. Could it be replicated?”
the collective queried.

“
Affirmative.
”

The collective gathered the data and sang its way home to a war-torn people they thought they were about to save.

VE
SSELS OF ABADD
ON

Originally appeared in Best Served Cold: An Eye for an Eye from RuneWright Publishing in July, 2012.

Staring down at a black-cloaked tangle of evil, Captain Kurlock stood on the bridge of the stolen Confederacy cruiser
Chimera
. The evil at his feet had a name—Raspa. He, if one could grant a shred of humanity upon such a thing, knelt on dull gray deck-plates, a calligraphy brush in one hand, a blood-filled inkwell in the other. He busied himself with the creation of a grand pattern, muttering in a strange tongue as he worked.

Despite a dreadnought and three light cruisers on
Chimera’s
tail, Kurlock had ordered his command crew to leave the bridge until the ceremony ended. Blood spatters covered Kurlock. Wiping crimson from his face and hands with a crisp, white towel stolen from the previous captain’s ready room, Kurlock stood behind the command chair and waited upon Raspa’s labors with all the patience of Job. The blood belonged to a nameless assortment of unfortunate souls from the skeleton crew left aboard
Chimer
a. The rest of her crew was still back on shore leave at
Gypsy Station
, a resort platform set in wide orbit around Alpha Centauri.

Kurlock’s long black ponytail had miraculously escaped most of the wet-work, so he reached a hand back and released the thong that bound it.
Everything will be mine soon enough
, he thought, s
tarting with the wealth of Lyrra Station
. An evil smile split his face. Bright lights above set his deep eyes into dark shadow, and the smile changed into a wide rictus, making him look like a predator ready to devour helpless prey.

“I’m almost finished.” Raspa’s voice crackled like the twisting of dry reeds.

“This better work, Raspa,” Kurlock said with easy menace. “We can’t outrun the hounds forever. If we die, you die with us.”

“No need to worry. A bargain’s a bargain. Abaddon will grant you exactly what you want …
as agreed
.”

Kurlock remained silent as Raspa set brush and inkwell aside and went through the awkward, creaking chore of standing up. His cloaked shape was emaciated, spindly limbs bent and twisted in ways unnatural for any living creature. He turned a grizzled, skeletal face to Kurlock, but his eyes were full of an almost impish delight.

“There!” Raspa stepped back and away from the two-meter summoning circle he had traced upon the deck. The perimeter comprised two circles containing runes of a language Kurlock didn’t recognize. A bold pentagram lay inscribed within, and at its center another double-circle encased more runes. “Do you remember the incantation, the words to bring it forth into this world?” Raspa hissed. The central ring of blood was just big enough for a man to stand in.

The captain grinned like a wolf. “Like they were my own name.” A momentary flash of fear, invisible to Raspa, coursed through Kurlock at what he was about to give up, but what he would gain crushed it down without mercy. He stepped boldly past the command chair and placed both feet into the center of the pentagram. He spread his arms just as Raspa had taught. Taking a deep breath, he uttered the bargain.
Abaddon, Chapthan thal-Fozza. Imla dan il-basthiment bil-qawwa thiegħech. I mifthuħa ruħi li girċievu inthi!
”

The pattern at Kurlock’s feet began to glow bright red then turned obsidian black traced with deep purple lines of electricity. He felt a throb through
Chimera’s
deck-plates, matching his quickening heartbeat. Black, smoky coils surrounded his body, obscuring his sight, and the electricity jumped from the circle to wrap itself around him. Energy coursed through Kurlock, and he screamed with the magnificent pain of it. The black tendrils coiling around him grew, becoming a swirling cocoon that thundered with energy.

His scream turned to an inhuman growl as a presence stepped forth from where it dwelled on the borders of Hell and into the willing vessel that was Kurlock. The black cloud coalesced into a seething knot coiling around Kurlock’s fist. He dropped to one knee, bringing his fist down like the Devil’s hammer upon an anvil. A thunderclap shook the ship from nose to tail. Men screamed in terror on all decks. The thing within Kurlock passed into the ship in a wave of black energy, spreading out and turning dull gray steel to obsidian black.

The whole ship changed. The orderly curves and angles of her gleaming white and gray hull twisted into a blackened skein of evil. Where once there had been the orderly shape of a
Nelson
class Confederacy cruiser, there was now a chaotic pattern of bulges, barbs and runnels across the entire ship, as if durosteel plating had been transformed into the impenetrable hide of some ancient, saurian predator. Upon the nose of the
Chimera
shone a great, glowing version of Raspa’s summoning circle etched into the obsidian outer hull, a brilliant, blood red pentagram surrounded by two circles and the summoning runes that had opened the gateway between reality and Hell.