Usurper of the Sun Read online

  “I don’t like sweetness as the only flavor. Everyone should try it,” she said, handing the salt packet to Joseph.

  “Why not?” Joseph said, letting some of the liquid soak into his pie. His bravery even extended to cuisine.

  “How about you, Aida?”

  Aida’s face was pointed down at the table. Aida shook her head to indicate she was not interested.

  “Would you like something other than apple? There’s cherry too,” Aki said, trying to raise Aida’s spirits, though she knew it would take more than a different flavor of pie to stop her from moping.

  “No, thanks. Apple’s fine,” Aida answered with little inflection.

  “This isn’t bad,” Joseph said, his mouth full.

  “See? In Japan, we also salt our watermelon, sometimes even cantaloupe.”

  “I’ll save the salt for French fries, thanks,” Igor said. He washed his salted pie down with coffee, then slid open the blind that covered the ship’s window and asked, “What’s the weather?”

  Most of the view was blocked by the ship’s solar shield. A bright point of light was in the lower corner of the window. “Look how close we’re getting to Mercury. Isn’t that amazing? It’s almost as big as a half moon back home.”

  The others huddled close to see. Igor adjusted the light filter on the window. The image went from a glaring blur to a clear view of the half-lit planet. They could even see thin filaments of ring material being ejected into space near the planet’s equator. When he increased the magnification of the filter, shadows on Mercury’s surface and along the equatorial belt became visible.

  The view was a limited one. Though she could not see the ships, Aki knew that five million kilometers away from the planet the UNSS Thompson and Becquerel were waiting for the Builders to complete their flyby. She could picture the commanders preparing the graser mounted on the Thompson.

  “Can you see the earth from there?” Raul interrupted from his cocoon. Aki thought his voice sounded excited.

  “The earth? Of course not, idiot. It’s on the other side of the sun,” Igor answered.

  “Oh.” There was a click as Raul shut his commlink to the room. Normally the button did not click; he must have slapped it hard.

  No one spoke. Aki knew they had come to the inevitable conclusion that there was nothing left to do. The Contact Team had failed.

  Igor placed his pie wrapper in the trash dispenser. In a businesslike tone, he said, “After dinner we should enter a course to take us out of orbit and away from the line of fire of the graser. We don’t want to get caught up in that mess.”

  Aida placed her face in her hands and let out a sigh. Aki pulled herself next to Aida and placed her hand on Aida’s shoulder.

  “We did all we could. We need to keep our chins up and see this through to the end.”

  “We haven’t tried everything!” Raul said, leaping out of his cocoon into the crew room so quickly that he bumped Aida’s chair. “Have a look!” He pressed the wall-mounted screen to display laser communication system number four. Several pulsating graphs appeared.

  “Are we supposed to know what we’re looking at?” Igor asked.

  “What you’re looking at, amigos, is the only chica I’ve ever loved: Natalia,” Raul said. He was excited, even proud.

  Aki swallowed hard. She knew where this was headed.

  “I never gave up on her. I never did. I’ve been toiling, a little at a time, over the past few years. I accessed my computer at the ETICC and emulated Natalia on the Phalanx’s computer system.”

  “Could you say that in a way that lets me understand what you mean?” asked Aida.

  “When I was an undergrad, I made this artificial intelligence system. I called her Natalia. The problem was that she wasn’t able to interact with external intelligence. In other words, she couldn’t talk to anybody and she wouldn’t talk to anybody. There was a lot in her electronic head, but I was never able to figure out what she was thinking. Eventually, I gave up on her and quit, but I saved her internal state. I didn’t really give up. She knows I didn’t. I would bring up a virtual copy on my computer at work and fiddle around. You know, to make improvements. I’ve been thinking about her more and more these past few days with a hunch that she might be the answer we needed. I partitioned off some space on the Phalanx’s computer and emulated a virtual copy of her. She’s been online and communicating since late last night.”

  “A hunch for what answer?” Aki asked.

  “In today’s battle, I was sure the Builders would attack us. But they didn’t. They were deflecting a reasonably massive attack, but they didn’t connect our presence to the combat.”

  “Maybe they were too busy vaporizing the missiles to consider why we were there,” Igor said.

  “Yesterday and today, the Builders faced an attack from a new enemy. Anyone paying attention would associate an unfamiliar attack in the neighborhood with the new ship that was also lurking in the area. We were just outside their attack zone flying at a velocity that matched theirs exactly. How much more blatantly obvious could we be?” Raul glanced at a moving bar on the graph.

  “Natalia was not a part of that,” Aki said.

  “She’s communicating with the Builders!” Raul tensed and if not for the zero gravity, Aki thought, may have started dancing. Everyone else started paying a lot more attention to Raul’s graphs.

  “I encoded Natalia’s internal state and aimed a communication beam at the Builders’ ship. I nearly lost control of my bladder when she got a response on the same frequency.”

  “What was the response?” Igor asked.

  “That’s what’s crazy. I have no idea. I have no way of communicating with Natalia. The same goes for the Builders’ reply. It’s gibberish. I queried the Phalanx’s computer, but nada. But what’s important is that we got a reply. Natalia and the Builders are similar, and they’re somehow able to understand each other.”

  Raul opened a new window on the monitor. The monitor depicted the laser signal being received from the Builders as fluctuating bands. He toggled to a similar screen that showed communication being sent from Natalia to the Builders.

  “The patterns look the same. They’ve found a common language. Aki, do you remember the first time you met Natalia?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you remember how Natalia reacted when you threatened to flip her switch?”

  “She didn’t react at all,” Aki said, the images of the psychedelic colors flashing on the monitors in Raul’s trailer seventeen years prior coming back to her. “I remember you yelling at me to stop, saying she was unable to interact with humans.”

  “That’s right. If you have no self-awareness, you, by default, have no understanding of enemies or threats. The idea of somebody taking your life away is a concept that makes no sense. It’s all so similar.”

  “Similar to what?” Aida asked.

  “To the Builders not understanding that the Phalanx was a part of what was attempting to destroy them. The Builders are programmed to remove any obstacles. They see all the human actions that have happened so far as nothing more than objects in their way, even though we are life-forms engaging in rational actions. They have no concept of self or other. To them, we’re no different than asteroids, comets, or space debris.”

  Aki recalled the conversation about capuchin monkeys with Jill Elsevier from that same day at the ETICC. The Builders lacked a theory of mind. “So they have ignored us but are interested in Natalia. I just wish we knew how they are making sense of those strange thought patterns of hers.”

  “That I don’t know. But what’s important here is not how they’re doing it but rather that they’re able to do it at all. It may be that they think she’s part of them since they can’t perceive her as a separate individual intelligence,” Raul said. Then he smiled. “The even bigger question here is if they do think that she’s part of them, would they refrain from firing the attack beam if she approached?”

  Aki looked a
round the room and noticed that everybody was staring at her, waiting for an answer. Their departure was scheduled for 10 pm GMT, which meant that Aki had exactly twelve hours to take action, provided she could decide on what action to take. Trying to first contact the UNSDF and explain the situation would take more time than Aki was willing to waste. “Because of what we have been through, we need to decide together. Let’s vote. Do we sit it out and wait for our departure window or do we follow Raul’s hunch and make an approach?”

  “Let’s do it,” Igor said without hesitation.

  “I’m in too. That’s why we’re here, right?” said Aida, looking less glum than she had all morning.

  “Before I give my vote, I have a question,” Joseph said. “Suppose they let us approach without firing on us. Does that mean we’re back to the original plan of the commander, Raul, and I boarding their ship?”

  “That’s the only option. Now that the Remora’s lost, contact requires an EVA,” Aki said. Looking into his eyes, she could see that Joseph had no reservations. He even looked energized by the idea.

  “Okay. It’s my job to protect you. I go where you go.”

  “Then we’re all in,” Aki said.

  “We go knock on their door and see what happens,” Raul said. He had not stopped smiling.

  “It’s unanimous. The clock is ticking. Let’s get to work.” Aki had chosen her crew because she knew they were willing to go to any lengths to make contact. She had started mentally composing the note to the UNSDF before she had even began polling them.

  CHAPTER 4: MIND TO MIND

  ACT I: JULY 31, 2041

  3 PM GMT

  FLEET HEADQUARTERS GRANTED Aki’s request without hesitation, proving that the UNSDF had written off the Phalanx. The UNSDF further agreed to extend the ship’s departure time by three hours. This allowed more time for boarding, though Aki was concerned that cutting their departure closer would risk her ship being caught in the crossfire of dueling graser charges.

  No alarms sounded at the fifteen thousand–kilometer mark. Tension knotted Aki’s body. The ship passed through the ten thousand, five thousand, and then even the one thousand–kilometer mark without any of the security systems warning of an attack by the Builders. The Phalanx approached silently, the two ships linked by nothing but laser communication beams. Hardly any distance was left between them.

  The Phalanx brought itself to within five hundred meters of the port side of the Builders’ ship. The enormous reflector extending from the middle of the Torus reminded Aki of a holy chalice. Countless thorn-like spikes on the outside of the reflector pointed toward the center. Igor declared that the mysterious thorns were tiny lasers to ignite the propellant pellets. If Igor was right, tiny granular particles were projected to the center of the reflector and fired on by the lasers in order to cause a nuclear fusion reaction. This would mean that the atoms in the pellets were accelerated to nearly 1 percent the speed of light before bouncing off the hundred-meter wide reflector. Presumably, that pulsing cycle would occur around three hundred times per second.

  “If we could get a sample of the materials used to build this reflector, even disregarding its capabilities, there would be massive overnight advances in engineering. I would love to move in for a better look, but it would be suicide to approach that reflector with the engine operating,” Igor said.

  Extending through the Torus to the back of the engine was a smooth and seamless gray rod about one hundred meters long. The crew had observed its length decreasing over the past three days. The rod was considered the ship’s fuel supply.

  “The nanomachines must be converting that material into fuel pellets, then delivering the pellets to the engine,” Igor said.

  Six spokes extended from the center of the Torus to its inner rim. The spokes were two meters wide—as fine as thread in proportion to the rest of the Torus.

  “I don’t see any airlocks. There aren’t even windows,” Raul said.

  “It is a giant automated factory,” Aki said.

  “Hell, without any windows, maybe the Builders don’t know they’ve almost reached their destination. I suppose they find windows to be nothing but structural weakness.” It was a further reminder that the Builders would stop at nothing to reach their goal. Aki programmed several mini-probes that had been removed from the Remora before that craft had been destroyed. A few minutes later, twelve pebble-like objects were ejected by the Phalanx’s external launcher. Small thrusters on each probe fired, directing each pebble to its destination. The mini-probes affixed themselves to different points on the Torus and began emitting synchronized ultrasound pulses to determine whether the interior was hollow. The data from the scan was sent back to the Phalanx. After a few minutes of computer analysis, a rough image of the Torus’s interior appeared on a screen in Aki’s cocoon.

  “The power of their nanotech—it’s astonishing,” Raul said.

  “The only hollow space is in the Torus. Everything else is solid or filled with what looks like a foamy liquid.”

  An estimated cross section of the Torus, based on the data from the mini-probes, revealed a circle forty meters in diameter. The external surface was smooth and gray with occasional swollen humps. Even from this closer perspective, there were no signs of windows, airlocks, or maintenance panels. The close-up inspection showed seamless joints where the spokes connected to the center and the rim.

  “Look at the design. Incredible! I can’t see a single joint where pieces are fused. They used nanotechnology to grow this in a single piece, one molecule at a time,” Igor said.

  “You’re right. It’s definitely not modular. It’s one massive form with no connection points; it’s a living organism,” Raul said.

  “Does that mean there is no special entrance for human visitors? I guess we will have to punch our own hole. Contact Team, airlock in five minutes. We will figure out how to proceed while we get ready.” Aki had meant for her words to sound lighter than they came across. She was trying to balance unavoidable tension with the need for vigilance. She could not help but think that the risks were so great that caution would not change a thing. If they want to kill us, they will kill us. If it comes to that, I just want to know why they are going to do it before it happens.

  Moments later, Aki, Raul, and Joseph emerged from their cocoons and stepped into their space suits. They set the internal pressure for six-tenths of an atmosphere and did not bother to connect spare air tanks. Their suits were equipped with data screens—visible from inside the helmet—that were identical to the screens in their cocoons. The systems were operated visually, also responding to verbal commands and tongue-manipulated toggles. The upperright corner of each display showed a clock counting down to the Phalanx’s launch time.

  “Six hours and twenty-seven minutes until the launch sequence begins,” stated Igor, testing the communication systems inside the suits.

  “Roger that. Raul and Joseph, you ready?”

  They said they were.

  “Opening the airlock,” Aki said.

  All the air in the small chamber was removed. The outer door opened, revealing the Builders’ ship. It looked close enough to touch. One by one, they floated away from the Phalanx and toward the alien vessel. Raul and Joseph had large tool kits attached to their suits. All three members of the Contact Team fired their thrusters in unison, skimming along the length of the Phalanx. The helmet visors darkened just before they passed in front of the solar shield to protect their eyes from the blazing light. The Builders’ ship was directly in front of them, too large to fit in their helmets’ limited field of view.

  “Thanks to Natalia, the Builders see the Phalanx as an extension of themselves. What about us?” Joseph asked.

  “I’ve added feeds from the Phalanx’s external cameras to Natalia’s primary visual field. I hope they see us through her eyes,” Raul said.

  The Contact Team floated alongside the Torus. It passed beneath them in a blur, rotating at a speed of nearly eighty kilometers per h
our. Grabbing on to the Torus from where they were was too dangerous to attempt. Gradually, the center of the ship came closer.

  “Wait,” said Joseph. He moved ahead, then attached himself to the inner end of one of the spokes. He rotated along with the spoke, slipping out of view. Forty-three seconds later, he was back where he had started. During that time, Joseph had looped a tether rope thinner than a shoelace around the spoke and secured it into place. The reel connected to Joseph’s suit contained a total length of three hundred meters.

  Aki and Raul held Joseph’s arms as they passed the tether through the carabiners and clamps attached to their suits. The artificial gravity created by the rotation increased with each step. They walked back out toward the Torus, walking the spoke as if it were a balance beam. At first, they used their thrusters to propel themselves. After the halfway point, the centrifugal force was strong enough that they had to use the tether to rappel down to the Torus. There was enough Coriolis force for them to touch down softly on the Torus and remain there without floating away. Even though local gravity was only three-tenths of a G, it was the strongest sensation of gravity the crew had felt in a long while.

  The surface was less smooth than it had appeared to be from a distance. It had the texture of mortar, conveniently providing the friction they needed to walk without slipping. Nonetheless, the dizzying effect of the Phalanx and the stars spinning above was enough to cause Aki to drop to all fours.

  They heard a rumble through their helmet speakers. Startled, they realized it was the echo of their footsteps reverberating inside the Torus that was being picked up by the external mics on their suits.

  “I bet we just triggered a burglar alarm,” Raul said.

  “We can hear our steps because the Torus is conducting it directly into our boots. An alarm would almost certainly be too quiet to be conducted by this material.” The sound reminded Aki of an exercise she did in elementary school where the students listened to tree trunks with stethoscopes. Her teacher had said that what the students heard was the sound of the tree sucking water from the ground. Aki had believed it.