The Final Voyage of the Wilbee Pharr

Lawrence Barker

 

(Day 19)

 

         Command pressed down on Ti Morgenstern like the weight of an ocean. She could run a trade mission, but this voyage had just become a war. What did she know about war? The stranger's kind might well have traveled space before humans had worked flint. The Wilbee Pharr had survived only because the aliens hadn't expected an attack. If they returned, the ship was doomed.

         Ti took the command seat. What Ti didn't know, she would learn.

         "Engage the luminal accelerator," Ti said, without emotion. "We're going after them." The crew could mourn their dead later. The terrible events of the last few moments replayed themselves in Ti's head...

 

 

         Space exploded into a purple-white plasma inferno. The alarms' demanding maternal voices babbled layered, incomprehensible warnings. The final voyage of the Wilbee Pharr, before the ship was scheduled to be recycled, had become anything but the routine trip Ti had expected.

         "There's a gap in the Great Wall." Wonder filled the voice of Kylie Chandra, elected commander at the voyage's start. The Great Wall—a five-hundred-light-year energy sphere centered on an icy, double-ringed planetoid between the stars Ross 154 and Lacaille 8760—bottled in humanity's expansion. It had done so since the first probes had reached it three centuries earlier. "St. Elmo knows when we might have another chance," Kylie continued. "Take Wilbee Pharr through."

         Zhing Lao, the voyage's helmsman, acted. The ship turned away from St. Alfwold's World and its separatists, awaiting their shipment of flechette guns. It shot out beyond the Great Wall. Ti swallowed hard as space returned to normal and the Great Wall closed behind them. Without another breach, Wilbee Pharr couldn't go home.

         "Three ships within two AUs," Zhing called. Zhing preferred the "astronomical unit" system to the light-second—the AU stayed fixed, while a luminal accelerator could increase light's speed. With 499 unaccelerated light-seconds per AU, the unknown crafts were close. "Small. Unfamiliar design," Zhing continued, the virtual reality headpiece that melded his consciousness with the ship muffling his voice. "Largest holding steady, others approaching at three times unaccelerated light speed."

         Without a luminal accelerator, anything approaching light speed dissolved into a battering quantum cannonade. But the strange ships, resembling feathery antennae, somehow overcame relativity's relentless rules. Centuries of exploration had uncovered no non-human sentients. Suddenly, aliens—real ones, not classical literature's bumpy-forehead, honor-fixated type—had become believable.

         "Slow to 0.05 unaccelerated c," Kylie ordered. As the crew's second choice for voyage command, Ti could have objected. She did not. The other ships might interpret the maneuver as a peaceful gesture. The Wilbee Pharr slowed. Ti disengaged the luminal accelerator.

         The twin ships stationed themselves around the Wilbee Pharr. Fractal fronds of glowing energy, curling in blue-white self-similar shapes, descended toward the Wilbee Pharr. Faster than light, they somehow avoided the superluminal dissolution into a cascade of destruction. The glowing gouts struck. Inconceivably complex images swirled over the monitors. They gave Ti a sensation of balancing on a precipice, or of sensing a hostile presence behind her.

            Zhing stood up and screamed. He ripped his headset away and collapsed. Ti dashed to him. Zhing moaned something—Ti's command of his old-style Cantonese was shaky—that sounded like "green-eyes in cold darkness." Zhing looked as though he had taken a cricket bat to the stomach, but his pulse was steady. Ti's foot bumped the headset that expanded sight to the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Ti shivered. How might the swirling energy have appeared to Zhing? More seething radiation gathered around the twin ships. "Awaiting orders," engineer Elian Ortega's voice crackled from the intercom.

         Tension filled Kylie's face. With no one bonded to the ship, the Wilbee Pharr depended on crude sensors. Kylie slipped on the headset, consequences be damned. "Fire a Model 14-A luminal accelerator missile," Kylie instructed.

         The normal burning insulation scent filtered through the Wilbee Pharr's ventilation system as the missile launched. As relativity demanded, the missile contracted as it reached half light-speed. The missile's luminal accelerator kicked in, a glowing darkness atop dull black space. Its speed passed that of unaccelerated light.

         More self-similar glowing blue gouts shot toward the Wilbee Pharr. They surrounded the ship, filling the monitor with surging fractal images. Kylie screamed in agony. Smoke drifted from the headset as the alien energy burned it out. Kylie collapsed.

         The warhead reached its target and exploded. The two nearer craft dissolved in white luminescence. The third turned and fled.

         Ti would worry about aliens later. She checked Kylie's pulse. Erratic. Ti grabbed the norepinephrine injector; that might bolster a failing heart. She felt for the commander's pulse again. Nothing. Ti bowed her head and whispered the Litany of St. Anthony the Abbot. All eyes locked on Ti, now commanding the Wilbee Pharr.

 

 

         "Approaching Alpha Persei." Ortega's voice drew Ti back to the present. "Alien entering the system."

         Ti glanced at the readouts. Two hot gas giants circled the star, while a rocky planet, chilly but tolerable with a respirator, orbited further out. She didn't know much more—the additional information that the virtual reality system would provide wasn't worth more casualties. "Within missile range?" she asked.

         "Marginal." Ortega's eyes asked for orders. Ti signaled for him to wait. With only two more missiles, she couldn't afford a miss.

         The alien ship, resembling a feather-armed crinoid, momentarily stood outlined against the star. Then it shot toward the terrestrial planet. Ortega shook his head. "We can only pinpoint its landing to within three kilometers. Atmosphere jams the sensors."

         Ti mentally inventoried the crew. Besides herself, only Lamont Jackson and Choolagang Plipat had seen ground combat. "Put the ship in orbit. Ortega, take command," she said. "Jackson, Plipat, and I are going to the planet."

         The next few moments were a blur: bumpy ride in a claustrophobic shuttle; sweaty hands gripping a nano-plastic flechette gun; jarring landing on a nameless, arid world with gray, dusty skies.

         Ti, adjusting to planetary gravity, circled the shuttle. Ground-hugging spiny gray vegetation carpeted the landscape. Despite the oxygen-poor atmosphere, flames danced about the foliage that the landing hadn't cleared. "Plipat," Ti ordered. "Look for anything that appears out of place. Jackson and I will deal with the fire." Crouching into a smaller target, Plipat darted away.

         Ti and Jackson stamped out the flames, exercise relieving the atmosphere's chill. Footsteps approached. Ti spun. It was Plipat. "No sign of aliens," Plipat said, his respirator rendering his voice distant and metallic. The vegetation beneath his feet released an overcooked cabbage smell that somehow crept into the respirators. "No obvious life," he continued, gesturing downward, "except this."

         "Which way?" Jackson quavered. He gripped his flechette gun as though he expected a horde of crazed tribesmen from ancient history to bound over the horizon. Despite, or maybe because of, Jackson's combat experience, his every gesture screamed "nerves."

         Ti cleaned her goggles. The gray, gritty dust would soon undo her work, but she did it anyway. "There." Ti gestured toward a nearby hill.

         As they neared the summit, a dry, spiny rustle echoed from behind. Jackson spun and fired, filling the air with flying flechettes' bee-hive hum. A fist-sized, ten-legged, chitinous black sphere scuttled into its burrow. "Good shooting," Plipat sourly observed. "Anyone that didn't know we're coming does now."

         "Can it," Ti ordered. Not that Plipat was wrong, but she couldn't afford an edgier Jackson. As best she could tell, the low, rolling hill that they climbed was the highest nearby. Breaks in the vegetation were few, except for the patch that the shuttle cleared. Might the alien's landing have done the same? "That way," Ti ordered, gesturing toward a bare spot a few kilometers away.

         They had covered half the distance when Plipat stopped. He gestured toward an almost invisible irregular blotch, five meters ahead and floating four above the ground. A high-pitched whine exploded from the stain on empty space. Ti shouted a warning. Before anyone could react, two blue-white fronds shot forth. Ti shoved Jackson away. She could do nothing for Plipat, farther away.

         One light-frond encompassed Jackson's gun. The other encircled Plipat's waist. Jackson squealed as his gun barrel crumbled into nano-plastic powder. Plipat had no time to scream. Both Plipat and his weapon dissolved, as though caught in a flechette crossfire.

         The blotch vanished with a burst balloon's sharp "pop." A dozen black spheres appeared from their burrows, whistling bird-song tones. They descended on the paste that had been Plipat in a frenzy of feeding. Jackson collapsed in a heap. "We've got to go back," he whimpered, eyes unfocused. "Back."

         "It's a land mine." Ti shook Jackson. "Not that different from the ones you saw on Santa Bibiana's World." Human-made land mines didn't defy gravity, but she saw no reason to mention that.

         Jackson clutched the flechette gun like a lost child might cling to a blanket. "We might as well use bows and arrows against someone so advanced."

         Ti started to slap him, then stopped. Jackson wasn't injured, but his mind would take days to recover. "Take shelter among those rocks," she ordered. She gave Jackson her mostly symbolic, one-slug-at-a-time firearm. "Use this if you need to defend yourself." Ti turned back toward the bare patch. She advanced quietly, flechette gun at ready.

         One moment, there was nothing. The next, the alien ship appeared from the dusty atmosphere, floating two meters off the ground. About fifteen meters across, the brick-red ship's resemblance to an aquatic invertebrate was even stronger from close up.

         Ti circled the ship. Vegetation rustled behind her. She spun, gun at ready. Crouched against a stone was a crimson, waxy-skinned, nine-armed starfish, a meter and a half across. This had to be from the alien ship.

         Ti took aim at the circle of sapphire-glistening eyes about the starfish's midsection. Ti's finger tightened on the trigger. She paused. She had every right to shred this thing. But how long had people looked into the sky and wondered if anyone looked back? This was the answer, a real alien. Ti lowered the flechette gun.

         A starfish arm shot out and encircled her wrist. Ti's skin burned as though she had donned a bracelet of stinging ants. Images flooded her mind. A few she understood: fleeing as the alien ship—the Wilbee Pharr—emerged from behind the Great Wall; planting defensive mines; bending light to hide the ship. The others were a confused muddle. The arm withdrew. Ti frowned. Had Starfish's memories really entered her head?

         More images clicked into place. The energy that had surrounded the Wilbee Pharr had been an attempt to communicate. The missile that destroyed the two drones, as Ti now knew them to have been, had seemed an attack. An abiding terror of something from inside the Great Wall—something that wasn't her—filled Starfish. The feeling that she had to understand gripped Ti. There was only one way. Despite the cold, sweat beaded on Ti's forehead. She reached out a hand. Solid human flesh and gelatinous alien tissue met.

         Images, propelled by a burst of red pain, exploded into Ti's mind. Squat, short-limbed nightmares, resembling black, knobby potatoes with three trios of glowing green eyes, emerged from a frozen world. So alien were the star-locusts—the name came to her, unbidden—that they might have come from another universe.

         First, the star-locusts crouched on their cold world and, in an indecipherable language of microwave pulses, formed their plans. Then their mighty horde broke up into swarms. Thriving in vacuum, the star-locusts sailed into space, the ion-pods that circled their bodies propelling them. Preying on all that lived, they came. With tearing jaws and death-dealing sting, they came. And civilizations, from Stone Age to early atomics, died.

         But after a few million years of ravaging, the star-locusts gathered on some icy, dead world for their next sixty-five million year hibernation. Only, the last time, they had selected a world in a then-uninhabited corner of space. The starfish folk had erected the Great Wall to contain the star-locusts. Starfish, a lone scout for its kind, had opened the Great Wall for an instant to see if the space-locusts had risen on schedule.

         They hadn't. They had awakened early, and had already swarmed into space.

         Ti recoiled in horror. She recognized the star-locusts' double-ringed frozen planet, midway between two stars—the Great Wall's center, not many light years from Earth.

         Ti frowned. The timing was too close for coincidence. Sixty-five million years ago, just before the star-locusts' last hibernation began, Earth's sky must have disgorged something worse than an asteroid. The star-locusts had come, and the dinosaurs had vanished.

         Starfish again took Ti's hand, this time without pain. Had Starfish learned to communicate without setting her nervous system ablaze?

         Starfish's thoughts washed over Ti. Speaking without words, Starfish told her how to breach the Great Wall; an appropriate signal, within any electromagnetic generator's capacity, would open a gap.

         Ti could scarcely believe it. Starfish would risk the star-locusts' escape to save a few bipedal aliens? Was it remorse over the casualties? Some totally alien emotion? Ti didn't know. She tried sending gratitude to Starfish. She didn't know if Starfish understood, but she tried.

         Three explosions filled the air. Three wounds opened on Starfish's middle, spraying a red-gray, viscous liquid. Starfish collapsed, arms separating from body. Starfish's blue eyes flickered, then dimmed. Ti turned. Jackson, holding the smoking side-arm, stood beside the alien craft. "I got it," Jackson cried in exultation. He trembled in what looked like a victory dance. "Got it before it got you."

          Before the shuttle left the nameless world, Ti buried Starfish beneath a pile of stones. She owed the lone space-traveler that much.

         The shuttle docked with the Wilbee Pharr. "What now?" Ortega asked, as he returned command to Ti.

         "We're going back to the central planets, but not to St. Alfwold's," she said. "Petty territorial disputes aren't important any more." She studied the crew's confused faces. How many would survive the war with the nine-eyed nightmares even now flying through space? How many humans anywhere? "Set a course for Earth," Ti ordered. "Maximal luminal acceleration."

 

(Day 24)

 

         The distress call whined from the monitor. The automated signal proclaimed the Epsilon Indi outpost's encounter with disaster, the nature of which it left unexplained. "The signal would have taken three days to reach this location," Ortega explained. "We could reach the outpost today."

         Ti shifted in the command seat. "The side trip will delay us reaching Earth by two days?" she asked. Ortega nodded, confirming Ti's hasty calculations. The decision pressed down on Ti as acceleration had on the ancient first travelers beyond Earth's gravity. Diverting the Wilbee Pharr would leave Earth unwarned that much longer. Ti started to give the command to keep going. Images of survivors, air and heat giving out, floated through her head. "Divert to Epsilon Indi," she ordered.

          The ship's course altered. Ti rested her chin on her hands. She had momentarily lowered the Great Wall, taking the ship back home. But what could she make of the confused jumble of images and impressions that Starfish had sent her? The starfish folk had mastered star-flight so long ago that they had forgotten the luminal accelerator, if they ever had it. If such demi-gods couldn't defeat the star-locusts, what chance did backwards humanity have?

         The appearance of Epsilon Indi, with its two brown dwarf companions, helped Ti disperse her gloom. Lives could be at stake, and Ti could not let her mind wander.

         The Wilbee Pharr shot toward where the orbiting outpost should be, on the star's distal side. The outpost swam into view. A cloud of particles encircled its cylindrical bulk—the outpost's water, vaporized in space and then desublimated into icy grains. The outpost itself, made of the same nano-fabric as the Wilbee Pharr, was shredded like a flag caught in a flechette burst.

         Something dark and ponderous bounced off the lens of the camera that fed Ti's monitor. "St. Drithelm preserve us," Ti whispered as she recognized the floating mass as a human body—or what was left of one.

         "Something approaching at half-c," Ortega said. He stared at his monitor. "Make that many somethings," Ortega corrected himself.

         An image flashed on Ti's monitor. A swarm of amorphous shapes charged the ship. Ti's fingers dug into the command chair's arms. The reality of the multi-lobed, amorphous star-locusts was worse than Ti had expected. Ti had described Starfish's death as an accident—why make Jackson's life worse, assuming he ever recovered? Outside of that, she had told the crew everything that happened on the planet. She wasn't certain that anyone had believed her. But the crew had to know what they were up against. She put the image on the large monitor. A collective gasp came from the bridge crew, as though the star-locusts' hideousness triggered some genetic memory.

         The Wilbee Pharr shuddered. Lights dimmed. A hundred small objects floated free as artificial gravity ceased, and then crashed in a thunderous rain as it re-established itself.

         "One of those things, hiding behind some debris." It was Ortega, barely audible over the cacophonous, synthesized warning voices. His eyes ran down the scrolling readouts. "Hit us hard. Luminal acceleration system down."

         "Repairable?" Ti licked her lip. She felt as though something important from the starfish folk's memory lay just beyond her reach.

         "Not for days," Ortega replied. "Maybe not then." A burst of microwaves, the star-locusts' communication, surrounded the swarm. The star-locusts became a tight pack. Green eyes pulsed in an awful asynchronous pattern. Then the swarm headed for the Wilbee Pharr. "Orders?" Ortega asked.

         Ti shifted in her seat. She had no doubt about the Wilbee Pharr's fate if the star-locusts attacked. "Arm and fire a 14-A," Ti told him.

         The missile launched. The missile accelerated to half-c. Its luminal accelerator kicked in, allowing it to safely pass light speed. The missile reached the swarm. Its warhead exploded. A few star-locusts fell back, injured. Some turned on their battered comrades, devouring them. The rest kept coming.

         Ti's fingers locked. More than ninety percent of the swarm had survived a fission explosion. The star-locusts were coming. She was certain that Starfish had told her what she needed to know. But what? "Fire the final 14-A," Ti ordered. The last missile launched. Then it swerved, shaking for a moment before it reoriented itself toward the oncoming swarm.

         "Missile damaged in the attack. Guidance system barely working." Ortega's voice sounded unnaturally calm, as though he had accepted his fate. "Warhead failure. Luminal accelerator failure."

         The missile accelerated, 0.1, 0.2, then half-c. Without a luminal accelerator to change light's speed, relativity ran roughshod. As the missile neared nature's speed limit, atomic integrity gave way. The missile dissolved into a rushing onslaught of free quarks.

         The stream hit the swarm broadside. A microwave burst poured from the swarm, the death-screams of the star-locusts caught in the beam. Black bodies shattered in space. The remaining three-quarters of the swarm dispersed with a raging microwave roar.

         Ti slapped her forehead. How could she have been so stupid? Ti entered a series of commands into the Wilbee Pharr's computers. Only a few days ago, such commands would have been insanity. Now, humanity's survival well might depend on those commands.

         "We're evacuating," Ti ordered. "The lifepods will support us long enough for the outpost's distress call to bring help."

         Ortega rose. "But those ... star-locusts, you called them."

         "If my plan works, this swarm will be gone." The star-locusts began to reform their swarm. "If not, it won't matter anyway."

         The next few moments were an insane rush, crew piling into lifepods and launching, putting themselves as far from both the Wilbee Pharr and the star-locusts as possible.

         Ti watched from the lifepod. As she had programmed the Wilbee Pharr to do, the ship accelerated toward the swarm. The ship contracted as it approached light speed. The Wilbee Pharr, without a luminal accelerator, became a concentrated cloud of quarks, ten thousand times as powerful as the earlier stream. Sub-atomic particles, matter and anti-matter, formed and annihilated each other. Energy from across the electromagnetic spectrum exploded into space. The cloud plowed into the swarm. The star-locusts died. Their shattered bodies joined the research station's orbiting debris.

         The sensors found no trace of the swarm. Ti leaned back. "Thank you, St. Jude Thaddeus," she whispered. The starfish folk had overcome relativity so long ago that they had never considered as a weapon the particle barrage that matter approaching light speed became. Mankind's very primitiveness would ensure its survival.

         Ti closed her eyes. Soon, rescuers would come. They would learn of the threat to civilization, and of the star-locusts' weakness. Humans, no longer confined within the Great Wall, would expand into the galaxy. For the first time in days, Ti smiled. That, and not a delivery of weapons to some squabbling separatists, would be the legacy of the final voyage of the Wilbee Pharr.

 

Copyright 2008, Lawrence Barker

Cover: "The Gatherers"