Usurper of the Sun Read online

  Raul placed his hand on Aki’s shoulder. “Take it easy. We’ll make this work.” He swiveled her shoulders, turning her toward him, then placed both palms on her cheeks. “Just promise me you won’t give up. A lot of people are counting on you to communicate with the Builders. Me for one, and several others at the ETICC at least.” He smiled and said, “We get criticism but plenty of letters of support. We’re missing some key piece of this puzzle. Have you considered that the Builders might be anosognosic?”

  Aki’s facial expression made it clear that she did not know the word. Raul launched into a detailed explanation. “It’s where somebody suffers trauma to the brain. As a result, they lose left brain functionality. In some cases, they suffer from paralysis of the left arm, for example, and aren’t even aware of the paralysis. If a doctor asks if their left arm is okay, they answer that it’s fine. It’s a completely normal left arm. If they’re asked to raise their left arm, they think they’re raising it but nothing happens. If the doctor moves the patient’s left hand into view and asks whose hand it is, they respond that it’s the doctor’s hand.

  “When the doctor shows both their two hands and the paralyzed patient’s arm and asks again, the patient claims that the doctor has three hands, and they’ll often launch into some cockamamy reasoning for the ‘extra’ hand that shows cognitive dissonance. They’re not crazy—in the sense that it’s a short circuit in their brain and they don’t think they’re lying or confused. They don’t find their reasoning strange because their perception is skewed. All that’s wrong is that their left and right hemispheres are no longer wired together. They are alienated from logical thought to the point where the illogical makes total sense. We have no idea how Builders think. Something that might be completely obvious to us could be a total mystery to them.”

  Raul took his hands off Aki’s face.

  “The world’s taking sides. There are doubters who think we should blow the Builders out of the sky before they get close enough to do us harm, and welcomers who see their arrival as a significant step toward a new era for humanity. But who’s right and who’s wrong? Maybe neither. Maybe the Builders are a mirror, reflecting back our hopes and fears of what they might be, of what we are—invaders, purveyors of peace, even gods from the heavens. This keeps us from seeing who the Builders really are because we force personas onto them. Maybe we’ll see what they really are and be unable to comprehend. Your job’s easy. All you need to find is the truth. We don’t need to love them or hate them. We need to find truth. Of all the people on Earth, Aki, my bets are on you to make that happen. I’m not the only one who feels that way.”

  ACT IX: NOVEMBER 4, 2035

  FIVE YEARS HAD gone by since the first day of the Builders’ arrival window. Scientists toiled, trying to improve observation systems. A new space telescope had been assembled in low orbit and was being transported to the third Lagrange point—exactly opposite the sun from the earth—where the gravitational equilibrium of the two bodies would hold it in place indefinitely. This way, if the sun happened to be blocking the view of HD 37605 from Earth when the Builders entered visual-contact range, the arrival would not be missed. Opposite the sun from the earth was also advantageous in using parallax to determine the Builders’ distance, once the Builders finally came into view.

  After two months of testing, the twenty-meter composite main mirror was pointed at Orion and locked into focus. The lenses of the telescope revolved, each observing the target focal point at a different frequency of light and beaming their images back to Earth. Seated at the center of each image was HD 37605, which was universally considered to be the star from which the Builders had come. The recently enhanced Deep Space Network and the Terra Luna Network took turns relaying the new scope’s signal. The images were sent directly to the Space Telescope Operations Center at the ETICC where the images were double-checked by human eyes.

  Theodore Pike had spent twelve years of his life scanning images for signs of the Builders. As the monotony got the better of him, he often did his job with his eyes half open. This day, however, Ted Pike’s boredom vanished in a flash. A new picture from the telescope appeared on his monitor. It was obviously anomalous, even though he had not been looking carefully. Even as the head image analyst, he was not always on his toes. Ted gazed at the 3-D luminosity variation graph as the image became more fully rendered.

  “Image quality’s a bit off,” he said to the other analyst on duty, who spun his chair around to look at Ted’s screen.

  “It’s from one of the brand-new image sensors.”

  “Looks a little fuzzy, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, Ted. Hazy, fuzzy dots sprinkled around HD 37605.” Ted’s coworker pointed at the monitor.

  “What did the previous shot look like?”

  Ted brought up two images taken immediately prior and compared all three. There was no continuity of the anomaly. In the past, they had noticed that white noise appeared against the background blackness in overexposed images. The two analysts assumed that this was the same kind of visual static. They did not pay any further attention to it.

  Four days later, another pair of analysts found the same anomaly. This time, the second pair of analysts shifted the telescope away from its target to see if the fuzzy dots were still there. They were not. The second pair of analysts conducted further observations, blocking out HD 37605 to study its mysterious light more closely. The analysts still needed to perform a full spectral analysis, but there was no doubt that they were seeing an object that was moving through space and emitting its own light.

  As further detailed observations were being made, the members of the ETICC Board of Directors were summoned for an emergency meeting. A backup telescope was brought online, creating a miniarray to gather more light from the object over longer periods of exposure. The result was instantaneous and shocking. Observations and equipment were double- and triple-checked to be certain.

  They confirmed that the light emanated from a black body whose temperature peaked at one hundred million degrees. The black body was as hot as a star’s core, like hydrogen undergoing the nucleosynthesis of nuclear fusion and becoming helium. Moreover, the light blinked at the rate of about 2,500 times per second. At first, the interval was considered random.

  Further study showed eight separate groups of lights, each pulsing at a rate of 316 times per second. The light source was surrounded by a faint halo. The halo area was much cooler than the center. Spectral analysis indicated that the object contained nearly every fundamental element. Confirmation from several astronomy satellites indicated that gamma radiation was also being emitted from the same point. Theodore almost fell from his chair, lips trembling. He said, “Almighty. It can’t be! They’re not using laser sails to slow down. They’re burning off their speed with nuclear pulse engines.”

  “Eight separate engines. When they discovered their laser sails weren’t going to work, they went with a backup plan, implementing a fail-safe.”

  “It’s unbelievable. What could they be using for fuel? Laser sails obviate the need to carry that much fuel in the first place. To decelerate from 6 percent of the speed of light to zero would mean almost all their mass is fuel. There’s no way they’re carrying that much. This isn’t making sense.”

  “Nanotech, Theodore.”

  “Nanotech can’t generate matter out of nothing. I can’t catch my breath. You think they gathered fissionable matter when they passed through the Oort Cloud? Grabbing a comet might work, but at their speed such a maneuver would shatter their ships to bits.” Ted Pike’s job was to watch the screen, but he thought he had considered every possibility. This was flabbergasting.

  “That’s not it. They’re using nanotech to convert the ship itself into nuclear fuel,” the other analyst said.

  “What? That’s not…” Ted realized that it was possible, even though he had been about to say otherwise.

  “Fifteen billion tons of mass, right? They take that mass, bit by bit, and hurl it in
to their nuclear reactors like fifteen billion logs on a nuclear fire.”

  “Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. Their hull, walls, and food. Everything,” Ted said, his voice shaking as he leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He said, “They slow down, but not much is left. Charred on arrival.” It came out muffled.

  The Builders had already slowed to two thousand kilometers per second and were decelerating gradually. Calculations concluded that the Builders would need to burn all but one ten-thousandth of their mass. When they brought the craft to a stop, they would have 1.5 million tons of matter left on arrival, the mass of three oil tankers. That much effort to put on brakes showed how determined the Builders were to come to a stop in this particular solar system.

  Humanity was terrified. No one knew why the Builders were coming, but coming they were. Six years, and they would be here.

  ACT X: NOVEMBER 20, 2037

  AKI’S PHYSICIAN MANDATED a full-body CT scan for her every single month. Aki felt that twice a year would be sufficient. Her extensive exposure to solar radiation still had not manifested any acute symptoms. Admittedly, delayed effects of the genetic damage that she had surely suffered could present themselves at any time. But twice annually seemed frequent enough to her, considering how long ago the high-energy ionization of her molecules had actually occurred.

  “Don’t grumble about it this time, Aki. We all have missions in life. Keeping you tumor-free is mine. Nobody wants to find out you had a lesion that could’ve been lopped off but it metastasized too quickly because we weren’t paying enough attention to your body. Think of the fleet. Think of morale.”

  Aki knew he was half joking. He had treated her for many years.

  “Fine, no more grumbles. But I have a favor to ask.”

  “That costs extra.”

  “How do I sneak out of this hospital so I can ditch my bodyguard?”

  Without asking a single question, he smirked and drew her a map.

  IT WAS AFTER sunset. The crowd created a warmth that overcame the cold air. The ceremony at Pac Bell stadium was starting soon. Aki had managed to lose herself in the swarm. She had turned down multiple requests to attend this disturbing ceremony in Washington D.C. Yet she had come after all, disguised in a scarf and sunglasses, out of morbid curiosity. She had no good explanation for why she had come. It was going to be a veritable sky parade of the military force that had been assembled to battle the Builders.

  Aki had taken over the directorship of the ETICC. No progress had been made in communicating with the Builders before her tenure began. In her four years, nothing had changed other than the public growing more opposed to throwing money into communications research.

  Aki tried to instigate change at the ETICC and promote the discovery of new options for talking to the Builders, but she knew all too well that there was little hope left. Even her promotion had actually been an attempt to strip away the influence she had at the UNSDF. The only reason the UNSDF kept the ETICC alive was to go through the motions. Their promise to welcome the Builders with an attempt at peaceful dialogue had rung hollow for years.

  Aki had not come to the ceremony in the hope of seeing a demonstration staged by welcomers. She wanted to see the faces of the people who were in attendance. After all she had been through, after all the animosity and failure, Aki wanted to sense the life in the eyes of the opposition. She wanted to understand their explanations and how the doubters saw the Builders. She needed to be touched by their desire to survive even though she did not agree with their methods.

  Once it had become known that the Builders were trying to stop their ship under their own power, the UNSDF mission to protect the solar system changed on all levels. Along with the mass they had to shed before arriving, the Builders were incinerating the threat they had posed as a massive, solid body traveling toward Earth at eighteen thousand kilometers per second. The Builders’ ship was now small and slow enough that it could easily be met by UNSDF ships and even attacked if necessary. Aki still held to the possibility that multiple Builder ships had been dispatched, but no other objects had been located and the idea had waned in popularity.

  Aki knew that nuclear weapons had substantially less power in the vacuum of space. The destructive force extends over an area only a few hundred meters from the hypocenter, making such a device relatively impotent when used on a large enough target. Regardless, thermonuclear weapons were the most powerful weapons in humanity’s arsenal. Special nuclear missiles and a device named the “spiderweb” had been developed in case aggressive action was needed. Each missile was as large as an eighteen-wheeler truck and was propelled by a pebble-bed reactor nuclear rocket. The spiderweb device was a four-kilometer wide net of coarse mesh. It was stored in a large capsule and was deployed using centrifugal force so that the net extended fully when launched. Despite seeming harmless, colliding with the spiderweb at a speed of sixty kilometers per second would cause massive damage. These were the ideas that were funded when we should have been trying to communicate.

  The clock on the large outdoor screen showed eight o’clock. Then the screen switched to the feed from a camera mounted on the weapons suspension rack of the UNSS Millikan. A sleek, cylindrical, and smoothly reflective missile that appeared to be made of liquid mercury gradually drifted away from the ship.

  “The nuclear missile has been launched, ladies and gentlemen. Its engine is now firing,” the announcer said. He struck Aki as if he were doing the play-by-play for an oddball Japanese gameshow. She knew that only the guidance control engine was being activated because the missile was too close to use its nuclear-powered engine. After a few minutes, a white flash could be seen from the back of the missile as it gained distance from the Millikan. By the time the missile traveled two hundred kilometers, it was no longer distinguishable from the surrounding stars. At that point, a second flash burst into view, a pure-white ball of fire that dissipated quickly. Sighs of disappointment percolated through the crowd until the announcer bellowed that the powerful explosion had been a success. Applause and cheers came from all sides. Aki sat down for a bit. Most of the spectators remained standing.

  Next was a demonstration of the spiderweb. Since the web was almost imperceptible to the naked eye, an infrared camera was used to capture the image, then the image was enhanced so that the metal webbing was visible. Ten kilometers from the ship, the web was deployed. Given the size of the giant web, it unfurled at astounding speed. To Aki’s ears the crowd seemed more impressed by the spiderweb than the nuclear missile. There was a short break. Aki sat quietly, knowing that the main event was slated for nine o’clock.

  “What you’re looking at now,” explained the announcer, “is an image from seven minutes and thirty seconds ago. This is the UNSS Thompson, which is currently near the Vert-Ring. The massive device it is carrying on its back is our very own graser, ladies and gentlemen! What an incredible sight! It almost looks as if the graser is transporting the Thompson instead of the other way around.”

  The long, narrow ship looked like the stem of a wine glass protruding from the back of the graser. During an actual attack, a second ship, the UNSS Becquerel, would link with the Thompson. Together the Becquerel and the Thompson would form the final line of defense, attempting to intercept the Builders.

  “The UNSS Thompson is currently unmanned. It’s being controlled from the UNSS Becquerel, located thirty thousand kilometers behind the Thompson. The targets being used for tonight’s demonstration are three spent fuel tanks positioned some two thousand kilometers ahead. The ship should be ready to fire any minute now.”

  Three egg-shaped objects spaced some distance apart from each other came into view. A countdown timer appeared in the lower right of the screen. As the clock neared zero, silence fell upon the stadium. Only the faint sound of traffic and other random background noise coming from the city were audible. As soon as the countdown reached zero, there was a blinding flash.

  When the view of space returned, the fuel tanks we
re nowhere to be seen. The scene was replayed in slow motion several times. The blast vaporized the tanks in a mere five one-thousandths of a second. The vapor from the explosion dispersed at the breakneck speed of ten kilometers per second, leaving the vidlink’s field of vision instantaneously.

  “Unbelievable, ladies and gentlemen, truly unbelievable! We have just witnessed the incredible power of the graser. Needless to say, the graser firing test has been a complete success! You have been a witness to the true potential of humanity! The Builders are about to meet their match!” The deep and booming amplified voice of the announcer, which was overwhelming in and of itself, collided with the roaring exultation of the crowd.

  Aki wondered if people could possibly be this obtuse. Perhaps the UNSDF had discovered how to trigger the graser, but no one knew how the collimation device worked or how to recharge it. She wondered how many people were aware of the flaws in the plan. The military had been sly, convincing hundreds of millions of viewers that slicing the graser from the Island and carrying it to a new location meant that the military knew what it was doing. The situation was certainly not going to be that simple.

  Aki stared up into the clear, cold darkness of the night sky. Above the nocturnal skyline, she could make out Orion. Next to Orion’s belt was a new star that was shining almost as brightly as Sirius. Although the composition of the light could not be determined with the naked eye, Aki remembered the nausea she had felt when she read the analysis of the data collected by the satellite telescopes—iron, lead, aluminum, hydrogen, silicon, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The Builders were burning the elements that made up their ship, probably even themselves. The light carried proof of the atomic decomposition. The Builders were willing to sacrifice 99.99 percent to ensure that one ten-thousandth would arrive at the destination. How are you managing to do this? Why are you so utterly committed to coming here?