The Siege of Sirius Page 6

  “Well this is neat,” Foster said.

  “Rivera’s team got it up and running during the first year of our journey,” Pierce said. “We can view a layout of the system here and plan where to go.”

  Foster reached out and tapped the hologram which interacted with her touch and zoomed in or out depending on her hand movements. Labels appeared over planets that listed their size, orbital period, gravity, average surface temperatures, and atmospheric composition amongst other interesting facts.

  “I see we already got a lay of the land,” Foster said.

  “We’ve been scanning constantly as we slept and built this map,” Pierce said. “And now that we’re closer we can update it with new information from ship scans and probes, as well as anything Tolukei discovers with his ESP.”

  The three began to examine the data closely as it progressively updated with new information as they approached the system. A lot of the data cataloged was heavily focused on the planets as Sirius itself, while interesting, they knew about from telescopes looking at it over the years. Sirius A was a massive white main-sequence star nearly double the size of the star Earth orbited, and produced light that could easily render someone blind in a matter of seconds as it was nearly 25 times brighter. Lucky for the crew all windows automatically dimmed to control the amount of light that came through.

  Sirius A had a companion dubbed Sirius B a smaller white dwarf that orbited with Sirius and therefore was cooler compared to Sirius A. And upon closer inspection the trio discovered what appeared to be a third companion, one that wasn’t supposed to be there based on past knowledge of the system. After double-checking the data with the sensor logs along with EVE’s analysis and Tolukei’s ESP, they confirmed that it wasn’t a system glitch.

  “A brown dwarf star,” Pierce said with interest. Foster made the projection zoom in toward the third star. “It has a planetary system.”

  Foster smiled and said to Pierce. “Holy shit, you know what this means, right? Sirius C is real.”

  “My god.” Pierce was floored. “Though it would explain why we were never able to detect it, at least not from Earth, it was too faint to be seen.”

  “And orbited around the known Sirius pair,” Foster said. “Still doesn’t explain why Radiance never discovered it.”

  “This is still an unexplored region of space to them; perhaps they only took brief scans, where the presence of a brown dwarf could easily have been missed if its orbit placed it behind Sirius A at the time of the scan.”

  They watched almost in a trance like state as a simulation played on the hologram. It showed the brown dwarf Sirius C followed an orbital path that circled around the Sirius pair of A and B.

  “All right, we got not two but three systems all in one, and all with planets around ‘em,” Foster said. “We got our work cut out.”

  “Let’s chart Sirius B first,” Williams suggested. “We’re closer to it and it will be a great chance to see what happens to planets in the aftermath of a red giant.”

  Foster tapped the image of the white dwarf of Sirius B. The projection expanded to show the orbiting planets at the edge of its system. As expected, there weren’t many planets close to Sirius B as many had most likely been destroyed during the time it was a red giant millions of years ago.

  Foster returned to her captain’s chair while Pierce returned to his science station. “Helm, set a course to Sirius B.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  ESRS CARL SAGAN

  Traversing the Sirius B system

  May 18, 2050, 17:17 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The Carl Sagan conducted short surveys of the planets that orbited Sirius B. The geologists aboard became ecstatic as data from the probes transmitted their findings and pictures back to the ship. The rest of the crew wasn’t as easily impressed, naturally the pictures that loaded were nothing more than frozen rocks, mountains, and craters. Every planet encountered was rocky, heavily cratered and devoid of all life. Most lacked atmospheres, burned off during the red giant stage with rugged terrain that resembled the surface of the moon back at Earth.

  Some planets showed promise for future mining operations, traces of valuable minerals rested in the bellies of those worlds, waiting to be plucked by the new arrivals. Mining would be critical if they were to make this region their new home. Data sent back from a probe revealed one of the gas giants to have huge potential for heileum-3 mining, excellent news considering Sirius A also had a gas giant. Two sources of heileum-3 wasn’t a bad thing at all. Preliminary plans were drawn up by the colonization teams to establish mines and science and research outposts in the system.

  Foster noticed the smile that stretched across Dr. Pierce’s face the longer they stayed in the system. Every probe they launched sent additional streams of data that updated their knowledge base of the system and its wonders. And to think, this was only Sirius B, there was still the planets of Sirius A and Sirius C to explore and catalog.

  ESRS CARL SAGAN, Captain’s office

  SB-215 orbit, Sirius B system

  May 19, 2050, 06:32 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The crew awoke bright and early the next day. Foster gave Williams the heads-up about her cat and for him to look after it if she was on duty and he wasn’t. She had a feeling that she’d be pulling long shifts for the next several days as the trove of data collected by the dozens of probes deployed throughout the system continued to arrive.

  The Carl Sagan remained in orbit around SB-215, a small, cold moon around the gas giant of SB-2. Foster was looking forward to the day they’d be able to give planets and moons a name rather than the automated designation EVE tagged them with. Foster sat in her office located beneath the bridge, another feature of ship design adapted from Radiance. Foster’s desk sat before a wide window that peered out into space. Plants from Earth decorated the office, while a small countertop off to the side became home of a coffee maker and a display cabinet held models of various ships in the UNE navy, though the layout was still a work in progress. Foster had hoped to further decorate her office with more of her personal belongings from her quarters.

  She took a sip of her warm drink as she reviewed reports and data that were transmitted to the ship during their sleep. There was a problem that needed to be addressed right away, water. The Carl Sagan had enough water to satisfy the needs of the crew and a few thousand liters stored away for an emergency and more on reserve for the future colonists once they awoke. Safe drinking water needed to be found in the system otherwise they’d need to enforce strict water rationing protocols. The thought of monthly showers made her shudder. Then there was all the plant life growing in the greenhouses. They’d be critical for the start of a colony, especially if they had to settle on a world with unbreathable air and live inside an enclosed environment. Plants will remove CO2 and replace it with O2, but plants, like all living things, need water to survive.

  A staircase off the side brought her up to the bridge where she approached Dr. Pierce who was reviewing data collected by the probes, namely if there was a world that had water.

  “You’re surprisingly silent,” she said to him.

  Pierce kept his eyes on his computer screen and his arm resting on his cluttered workstation. “Busy doing my job.”

  “Doesn’t the discovery of Sirius C make you think just maybe?”

  As important as it was to search for water, Foster was surprised that Pierce didn’t say anything more about the discovery of Sirius C. The Dogon tribes of West Africa claimed for years that aliens visited them from Sirius and told them stories that it was a trinary star system. Now they stood before proof that Sirius was indeed that. Pierce a former advocate of the theory of the Dogon kept quiet about it.

  “Nope,” Pierce said after a slight delay. “OK, well it’s interesting, but we don’t know anything else. Plus, we haven’t seen any signs of ships, so it’s safe to say the legend about this system are still just stories told by ancient humans that didn’t know any better.”
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br />   His computer beeped causing the two of them to look at the flashing notification that appeared on the screen. Pierce’s fingers interacted with the terminal as he revealed the report that populated the screen.

  “Here we go,” he said. “Got a planet here, a frozen one with traces of ice all across the surface. Lots of it too, looks like it was once an ocean.”

  Foster leaned in closer to look at the data a probe had sent them two hours ago. It had landed on one of the most distant planets in the Sirius B system. It was an Earth-sized planet, tagged SB-417. Its distance would have placed it in the habitable zone during the age of Sirius B’s reign as a red giant, meaning that liquid water may have existed on its surface in the past as well as an atmosphere with rain clouds that never got stripped away from the punishment of the former red giant.

  “Worth a look,” Foster said. “Helm, set a course to SB-417.”

  ESRS CARL SAGAN, Bridge

  SB-417 orbit, Sirius B system

  May 19, 2050, 08:11 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The ESRS Carl Sagan exited from sub light speeds and entered orbit around the frozen planet of SB-417. The planet’s orbital path not only placed it as the furthest away from Sirius B, but also away from Sirius A in the distance, thus making it the most remote planet between Sirius A and B.

  Foster glared at the dark ice-covered planet from the windshield and wondered if this is what Earth would look like in several million years, after the sun goes through its red giant stage then shrinks into a white dwarf. Though in Earth’s case, its oceans would have long boiled away, this planet however still had its oceans, they just froze over.

  “Deploy another probe, let’s get some detailed scans on that ice,” Foster said.

  “We might want to do more than that,” Pierce said.

  “Oh?”

  “Now that we’re closer we got a better idea on what’s on the surface.” Foster stood behind him and looked at his computer screen. He directed her attention to the appearance of several objects on the surface, partially encased in snow and ice. “Those don’t look natural to me.”

  “Those look like structures.”

  Several areas of the surface, that was once solid land before the big freeze, had cylinder-shaped structures that surrounded several pyramid-shaped ones. The pattern of shapes was constant throughout the planet, there was no way it was a natural formation of rocks or ice.

  “Intelligent life was here,” Pierce said.

  “Most of these structures are at least two kilometers away from the ice too, guess you were right about the frozen ocean,” said Foster.

  “Makes sense, Sirius B was a red giant and therefore this planet during that time received enough heat to have an ocean. What doesn’t make sense however is that’s not enough time passed for life to evolve, an intelligent species to advance, and build these before dying off.”

  Pierce was right, given what was known about the Sirius system. White main sequence stars burn their fuel quickly which results in them swelling to a red giant, then collapsing into a white dwarf faster than a star such as Sol. With an age of two to three hundred million years, Sirius B only spent a fraction of those years as a red giant, so there was no way for anything major such as the evolution of multicellular life to arise on SB-417. The planet would have at best had flowing water on the surface, but nothing more unless a species that had access to interstellar travel arrived during that time.

  Either that, or what they knew of evolution was completely wrong. The latter seemed least likely as the Radiance database proved that life had evolved throughout the galaxy in a similar manner and timespan as that on Earth. Not precisely, but pretty damn close.

  “Nobody is dead.” Tolukei’ s deep voice rang out.

  Both Foster and Pierce faced him and said in unison, “What?”

  “I sense psionic activity on the surface,” Tolukei said. “It’s very weak.”

  “You’re saying someone, something is alive down there? In this cold and darkness? And it’s a psionic?” Foster said.

  “I am saying there is a weak psionic force on the surface,” Tolukei said.

  “Captain, permission to lead a survey team?” Pierce asked Foster.

  “Granted, though I’ll be leadin’ it.”

  Foster strode toward the exit of the bridge as Pierce followed excitedly behind.

  “Isn’t the captain’s place on the bridge?” Williams said before she exited.

  “Not this captain,” Foster said to Williams. “I didn’t travel over fifty trillion miles from Earth to sit on the bridge all day barking orders. Dom, you have the bridge.”

  Williams nodded. “Understood.”

  “I saw you eyeing that chair, so don’t be bashful, keep it warm for me.”

  7 CHEVALLIER

  ESRS Carl Sagan, Docking bay

  SB-417 orbit, Sirius B system

  May 19, 2050, 08:49 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Master Chief Petty Officer Mathilda Chevallier grinned as one of the crew had referred to her as ‘MC,’ a nickname that had quickly grown on her since coming aboard. She double-checked to ensure her equipment was good to go alongside her CO, Commander McDowell, and Petty Officer Third Class Kingston.

  McDowell asked her and Kingston to join him, as the captain and some science officer insisted on traveling to the surface. Chevallier, and the rest of the party wore standard issue UNE Hammerhead combat armor complete with personal shields and helmet. The armor also doubled as an EVA suit allowing them to perform a space walk and traverse the surface of a hostile environment, like the one below. It even worked well in deep-sea operations, truly living up to the name Hammerhead.

  Chevallier looked at the docking bay as she hovered in the weightless environment. On UNE battleships, this section of the ship was reserved for the storage and launching of transports or Solaris fighters. Here on the Carl Sagan, there were transport ships . . . and more transports, a few dormant probes, exploration rovers, and a bunch of other weird gizmos. She had no idea what they were called or what they did. She wasn’t impressed.

  “So, I hear the bridge crew gets nice soft chairs to sit in,” Kingston said to her.

  “Does that surprise you?” Chevallier said. “They’re not military; they can’t handle standing up too long.”

  “It’s a Radiance design,” McDowell said. “They have seats for every station on their bridges.”

  “I’m still sticking to my story,” Chevallier said.

  Kingston laughed as he performed a somersault by some strange means to impress her, she rolled her eyes at him. “Can’t believe we got stuck on this boat that’s run by non-military.”

  “Eggheads aren’t fighters, they run the ship and from time to time get out and look around,” McDowell said.

  Chevallier watched Kingston perform another zero-g somersault, he was clearly bored and growing impatient. “Then why is the Captain coming along?”

  “The fuck if I know, guess she think she’s hot shit,” Chevallier said. “I hear she hasn’t been in proper uniform since coming out of cryo. Way to lead by example.”

  McDowell snorted. “You’re one to talk MC?”

  Chevallier looked at McDowell’s tall body and bald head, shot him a smug grin and said, “No, sir.”

  He didn’t smile back, and she knew why. Chevallier’s long reputation of butting heads with officers was well-known throughout the navy, including the personnel assigned to the ship. There was not a single doubt in her mind that McDowell was asked to join the team at the last second as a means of undermining what was supposed to be her command and leader of all UNE navy personnel and Hammerheads. They glared at each other, Chevallier may have had a smaller and slimmer body compared to him, but she was still a fiery redhead who had broken the bones of men twice her size in the past.

  She moved away from McDowell and hovered next to a weapons locker, then keyed in the pass code on the terminal’s touch screen. As its doors slid open she listened as Kingston and a crewman spoke. T
hey were rambling about her. She held onto her eRifle and acted as if she was performing systems tests on it.

  “What’s her story?” The crewman asked.

  “HLF attacked a temple set up for Radiance in New Miami,” Kingston said. “She disobeyed orders, got everyone killed including her team. Got grilled by her CO, then broke his nose. But she’s the daughter of Captain Chevallier of the Wilfrid Laurier, so she got off with a slap on the wrist and was shipped out here, so they wouldn’t have to deal with her or the bad publicity.”

  She continued to listen in as they talked about her lifestyle of partying hard and drinking people under the table. They compared her to a marine rather than someone in the navy. Captain Foster and the egghead scientist arrived sometime later, thus ending the chitchat as attention was directed to them.

  “Coming with us, I hear?” Chevallier said to her.

  “You heard correct.”

  Chevallier grabbed two ePistols from the lockup and handed them to the Captain and the scientist, who introduced himself as Dr. Pierce. Not that she cared or would remember five minutes from now.

  “I hope you know how to use these,” Chevallier said to the two.

  “eWeapons,” Foster said as she holstered the weapon into her cargo pants. “I miss the old-world stuff.”

  eWeapons were reverse engineered Radiance magnetic weapons. They fired bullets accelerated by magnetic fields toward a target. The weapons were wholly computerized and presented tactical data back to its user via a targeting screen. It was also capable of syncing with the computer systems within combat armor and relaying information gathered by the targeting scanner to the wearers HUD. Hunks of metal served as its ammunition, and the weapon sliced off pieces of the metal to form appropriate sized bullets for the encounter; no reloading required. The rail guns of the Carl Sagan and other ships functioned similarly but on a larger scale.

  The weapons were indeed a huge step up from old-world guns used prior to the Hashmedai invasion of Earth, though it had its drawbacks, the biggest being power. If a rifle lost all power either from an EMP or low batteries, the weapon became useless. Computerized weapons also meant they were vulnerable to computer viruses or skilled hackers, though such incidents were extremely rare.