Usurper of the Sun Read online

  “The automated production facilities they built on Mercury are still in operation. As long as the production facilities continue to run, we will have several chances to perfect our influence over the messenger cells. Most importantly, the act of rebuilding the Vert-Ring would send a clear and unequivocal message that our intentions are not malicious. I believe that a civilization that mastered nanotechnology, nuclear fusion, and perhaps even antimatter could not accomplish such achievements without first overcoming the plague of intraspecies war. Let us not be consumed by suspicion. Let us set aside our fears and imagine the day when we will meet the Builders face to face. Let us see them as the benevolent and intellectually advanced beings that they must certainly be.”

  More than a few journalists applauded.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, a secret meeting was held on a highly secure part of the Worldunity Network. The participants were all representatives of different forces—governmental, economic, scientific—but they did not know one another. Their voices were disguised. There was no visual component to the teleconference. They did not use, nor even know, one another’s names. Two men spoke, as was the tradition at these meetings, while the others simply listened, and these two men knew just what to say without prompting, briefing, or talking points in hand.

  “Damn that Shiraishi. I think we underestimated her. Grossly,” said the first voice, a rich baritone.

  “No chance of getting rid of her?” responded the second voice, which sounded tired, as if nursing a head cold.

  “Not now. Too many questions, too many supporters.”

  “That speech will turn the tables. Instant polling shows that 52 percent of North America is in favor of rebuilding the Ring ‘sideways,’ as the survey phrased it. And now only 46 percent support an assertive security posture.”

  “That’s not much of a lead. Once the dust settles, we’ll regain ground.” The first voice laughed loudly, though it didn’t fit with the conversation. Something else must have happened in his location at that moment.

  “Still, 74 percent are in favor of her messenger cell experiment. Success clinches their plan’s momentum.”

  “It won’t be that easy. Decoding the human DNA sequence was touted as being promising, but look at how long it took to actually happen. They will spend years groping in the dark trying to figure out how to manipulate those messenger cells.”

  “They have the top nanotech people.”

  “Her speech was nothing more than a far-fetched personal pipe dream. What we need is to convince the public of the need for a preemptive strike against the Builders.”

  “Is that even possible?” the second voice asked. “Given their technology, what could we bring to bear against them? If the answer is ‘nothing effective,’ then her plan may be the only logical alternative. Trying to rendezvous with an object moving at eighteen thousand kilometers per second is out of the question. Even attacking something moving that fast would be no easy task. The average speed of meteoroids is twenty kilometers per second when the meteoroids hit the atmosphere. The Builders are moving at nearly a thousand times that speed. The aggregate energy released from an Earth impact would be exponential, something like a million times as great. The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs is estimated to have been ten kilometers across. With the speed the Builders are traveling, they could achieve the same effect with something one hundred meters across.

  “With twenty thousand tons of matter, they could take us out by sacrificing a couple of ships in their fleet.”

  “If they are planning to smash into us, their trajectory is clear. There’s only one straight line that connects Orion to Earth. We know exactly where they’re coming from. If we place an object in the way for them to collide with, we could forestall impact.”

  “How? Gravitational force exists; you can’t just place an object in space and expect it to remain stationary, waiting for them to show up.”

  “The best we can do is to locate their actual position and flight path.”

  “There won’t be time. Here, have a look at this,” began the first voice. Keys began clacking. The first voice continued, “We will have little time to act if their intentions are adversarial. We have a massive amount of matter headed toward us from Orion. The difficult question is whether it’s going to pass by harmlessly or whether it’s aimed to collide. Unfortunately, their trajectory is close enough to the plane on which Earth orbits. With the earth, the sun and this massive object aligned, it’s impossible to tell whether they’re targeting the sun or us.”

  “There are other unknowns. We don’t know the size or reflectance ratio of the approaching object or objects. If this hypothetical Builder cannonball absorbs light instead of reflecting it, observations in the visible-light spectrum will be difficult no matter how close they get. Infrared is a possibility—everything has a heat signature after all—but I hardly need to explain the economic difficulties of such detection. Nearly every observatory and satellite still in operation is oriented toward the Ring. Using the most powerful radar would only allow us to spot this potential catastrophe once the ship is in the inner solar system,” said the nasal voice.

  “Assuming the problem of detection requires new technology, what are our options for target destruction?”

  “It depends on our ability to detect it. The most optimistic scenario allows detection at eighty astronomical units, roughly eight days before it reaches Earth. Cruise missiles in low orbit can travel at ten kilometers per second. If cruise missiles are launched, contact would be achieved at five minutes and thirty seconds before impact with Earth. If they miss, there’s no time for second chances. Even if they destroy the target successfully, fragments from the explosion would impact the earth, unless we could move them 6,400 kilometers out of the way, essentially half the diameter of the earth, in five and a half minutes. In other words, we would have to accelerate every last fragment to a speed of twenty kilometers per second along a path perpendicular to their original trajectory toward Earth. I don’t think I am being a pessimist to say that it is impossible. To put the scale of such a task into perspective, the electromagnetic railgun developed by the U.S. military accelerates a bullet-sized object that quickly, but the railgun requires a launching device the size of a building.”

  Despite the bar on oral participation, some grumbling from third parties could be heard over the network.

  “We need not only detect the object at a long range but also begin deflecting it at this distance as well. A missile attack would by no means be fast enough. The best weapon of defense would be some kind of high-strength beam, though human technology isn’t capable of creating such a device.”

  “You’re saying that our only choice is to sit tight and hope for the best?”

  After a long silence, one of the members, most likely a third voice, interjected. “Going along with Shiraishi’s proposal might be the wisest route.” There was a long moment of silence, due to both the breach of etiquette and the audacity of the suggestion.

  “You’re suggesting we give in to her?” the first voice said finally.

  “Not quite. How does a judo master bring down an opponent twice his size? He uses his opponent’s strength against him. That’s what we need to do. Shiraishi is calling for this Vert-Ring to be rebuilt. We give her what she wants, then use it to get what we want, and she doesn’t even have to know.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not following.”

  “You’re saying we need a beam strong enough to deflect them? If we rebuild the Ring and take control of the Island, we’ll have just that.”

  ACT V: JULY 12, 2026

  THE UNSS CHADWICK decoupled from the base station, setting its course for a Mercury approach. Commander Kindersley’s biggest concern was to keep the forty billion dollar ship from being contaminated by the ring material. While scanning the local area with the laser radar system, the commander placed the ship into a five million–kilometer orbit around Mercury. The ship’s gigantic solar shields were pointed toward t
he sun, allowing only the sensor mast to absorb sunlight due to the intensity of the solar radiation.

  The unmanned cargo rocket that carried the two-kilogram probe had already been launched. It was about to cross the path of ring material emanating from Mercury. From her cocoon, Molly kept a close eye on the video being sent back by the cargo rocket. A silver stream of material flowed diagonally across the screen. Although she could not make out individual particles, Molly could see slight gradations of color indicating how quickly the stream flowed. The mass drivers ejected the ring material from the surface of Mercury at a rate of eighty thousand tons per second. Molly was somewhat surprised to see the color of the ring material become lighter as the rocket approached the stream. The material disappeared into the blackness of space once the rocket was inside the flowing sea of ring material.

  “It’s like being in fog. You don’t notice when it’s right in front of you and you’re in the thick of it.”

  “What was that, Molly?” Anastacia asked.

  “Nothing. Just mumbling to myself.”

  The probe’s speed relative to the stream was fifty meters per second. The probe detected three thousand collisions per second.

  “Let’s go another two hundred kilometers toward the center.”

  “Even if it doesn’t hold up to the stress for that long?” Anastacia asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve set the course to the waypoint.”

  The onscreen image began to deteriorate, and the screen that monitored the rocket’s sensors flooded with warnings. The ring material was consuming the rocket.

  “Prepare for separation.”

  The screen flickered, finally stopping on a still image with the words “Transmission Error” flashing in red.

  “Telemetry readings are still generating. We’ve reached the waypoint. Separation complete. Probe engine firing. Separation signal confirmed.”

  “The UNSS Chadwick has successfully completed deployment of the probe,” Commander Kindersley announced to Central Command. “Proceeding with the observation phase.”

  Moving along the orbit, the probe entered the flow of material being ejected behind Mercury. The flow of material continued for another five million kilometers before disappearing behind the sun. The probe would record data as it followed the material around the sun back to its starting point.

  The visible-light and infrared cameras were linked to the wideangle telescope and set to auto-track mode. All observational systems were functioning normally. The commander breathed a sigh of relief. “Good job, crew. All we can do is sit back and watch. Feel free to relax. You might want to avoid newsfeeds from Earth. I’m guessing we’ll be center stage for a few days. I don’t want your heads to swell.”

  “Too bad some people aren’t on our side. And I don’t mean that one presenter who always shows that picture of me with the bad haircut,” Anastacia said.

  “Even Aki Shiraishi’s reputation met its limits when she tried convincing people that this was our safest bet,” said Commander Kindersley.

  “I’m not sure she has as many allies as she’ll need if her plan fails,” Molly said.

  The mission had been an uphill battle. Molly and Anastacia had managed to decode less than 1 percent of the ring material’s mechagenetic puzzle. Nonetheless, the information Molly and Anastacia deciphered contained instructions for both the Ring’s size and orientation. The code for the formation of the Island, however, remained beyond the grasp of the decoding. Even with experts in nanotech working on the project, an understanding of the complex processes responsible for the creation of the Island would take another decade—tinkering with the existing code would not be enough to reconfigure the structure of the Island.

  After a learning curve that had been driven by an arduous process of trial and error, reprogramming samples of basic ring material had been successful under lab conditions. The key was in the upper command set of the ring material. If the probe functioned as hoped, it would overwrite the upper command set. When the probe came into contact with ring material, those instructions would spread like a virus to the rest of the orbiting material.

  The nanobots ejected from Mercury used microscopic solar sails to migrate into their stable orbit around the sun. If the modifications worked as planned, their vectors would be altered so that the Vert-Ring would eventually be perpendicular to their original orbit, stopping when the new Vert-Ring reached a radius of forty million kilometers. The researchers were fairly certain that all they needed to do was overwrite the orientation information in the Ring’s particles. They did not know whether the Island would still form when the Vert-Ring reached a height of three hundred thousand kilometers and if it did, whether the deceleration lasers would still be pointed in the right direction. Whether the encoded programming would have the inherent flexibility needed to maintain its structural and functional integrity when it followed new commands was an open question.

  Once the ring material left the gravitational pull of Mercury, it was even capable of leaving the solar system if such a voyage proved necessary. Ring material flowing in unexpected directions was one of the greatest fears of the project’s researchers. The most pessimistic commentators contended that crude alterations to the Ring’s programming could potentially send particles streaming toward Earth.

  Molly felt confident that the solar-powered material would stay close to the sun, not wanting to stray too far from its source of energy. Once the ring material moved into its pre-programmed position, it would await its signal to trigger the deceleration lasers. Molly also believed that even if the program became corrupted, the ring material would not deviate far from a forty million–kilometer distance from the sun.

  Eight hours after the probe entered the stream, a portion of ring material deviated from its previous path. The ring material moved vertically, away from the original Ring’s orbital plane. Within thirty hours, two symmetrical arms began arcing upward on opposite sides of the Vert-Ring. Molly extrapolated from the snapshot data and created a profile of Vert-Ring generation.

  “We’re there. It’s transitioning into a perfect spiral orbit. The material knows where it needs to go and is figuring out the path on its own. My calculations say that in exactly four rotations around the sun the nanobots will have reoriented the Ring as programmed. Send a message to Aki Shiraishi. Tell her that her dream of a Vert-Ring is coming true.”

  ACT VI: OCTOBER 20, 2028

  AFTER THE FIRST successful mission, another probe was sent to Mercury in April of 2027. The defense mechanism did not react to the gaseous spray of altered Vert-Ring ejecta introduced into Mercury’s fledgling atmosphere, allowing the instructions to eventually take root on the surface. Within two short weeks, the code embedded within the Vert-Ring’s particles was rewritten at the source—the mass drivers themselves. The exact mechanism that allowed the new code to infect the Builders’ automated production facilities was poorly understood. Not unlike how burning moxa to warm regions and acupuncture points of the body stimulates circulation and finds a way to smooth the flow of blood and qi throughout the body, the mechanism of the code was elusive but effective. A blog compared the success, especially with the incomplete analysis of the mechagenetics, to being as statistically unlikely as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle being thrown into the air and randomly assembling themselves into the proper picture as the pieces landed.

  The triumph of the mission meant that the UNSDF ships were no longer required to face the dangers of dismantling the Ring every few years. As Aki had planned, the Vert-Ring was reconfiguring in a way that would not cause substantial harm to Earth. All humanity waited for the new ring to grow to a height of 300,000 kilometers, following the growth cycle on a kilometer-by-kilometer basis in the mass media. If the Island formed at that point, as it had before, and if the deceleration lasers functioned consistently, the braking system would be able to usher in the Builders’ ships. The deceleration lasers, provided the lasers formed as they had before, would be com
plete by 2043.

  Research to expedite this process was underway, but there had not been any breakthroughs yet. The braking system would not be ready for at least another fourteen years. Given the range of the estimated arrival window, Aki would be in her sixties when that day finally arrived. She knew she would have lived a long life by then. If the Builders arrived before these rushed preparations, Aki could not help but predict tragedy and disappointment. She did not want that dark cloud of despair to hang over her for much longer. She had waited so long to make contact. She needed to communicate with the Builders in person. After her substantial efforts to atone, the pain of watching the Builders speed by with no means of slowing would be too much to bear.

  Why are you sending a fleet here? Are you fleeing your home, or are you being pulled to our solar system for reasons of your own? I wonder what you want to know; what you are like. Whatever is bringing you here, I beg the stars that you do not come too soon. We need time to prepare for your arrival. I need to meet you.

  “LEAVING THE PERSONNEL selection for the Mercury Base Station up to UNSDF Headquarters? You have got to be kidding!” Aki blurted at the Science Subcommittee. Even though they were not integrated with the UNSDF, the personnel selections for ringology research had always been made by the Science Subcommittee.

  “The initial stage of the project has ended. Now that we’ve started to unlock the Ring’s nanotechnology, the UNSDF is seeing its enormous potential. Let’s admit that some of these research applications are beyond our scope. It makes sense to select researchers that fit their needs,” Carol Horning, a long-time member of the subcommittee, had said.

  “But—” Aki stopped herself, unsure whether she was arguing due to feeling territorial or because of a legitimate objection that she could not yet articulate.