White out
I gave myself thirty two seconds to consider my alternatives. Thirty two seconds later my predictive subroutines had showed me my odds, but nothing had changed, there was only one option. I called up my scan of the Red Giant, I focused my attention on the fifty six pixels that showed the Star Engine devouring this ancient behemoth of a star. I had snapped the image as my orbit around the planetoid finally showed it hiding in the corona. It was an unmistakable swirl of colours as its gravity drive drew in the super hot plasma of the star’s outer hydrogen shell, to be processed by the zero point singularity at its centre.
The Cthauti were clearly master Astro-engineers, the Star Engine was the size of a moon, far bigger than anything the Hegemony of Humanity had built. Despite its beauty I felt no shame over my plan to destroy it. Docked with it were two hundred Cthauti ships, a navy fleet only four hundred light years from Terra Prime. This was their final recharge before an assault on my home, where my family live.
The first I saw my great grandson’s face I knew I would end up here. My granddaughter held him so peacefully in her arms, his beautiful facing lighting my world. My partner had tried to persuade me not to join, that we had so much time left. It didn’t matter, my future was worth less than that child. A week later I enlisted, having met the age requirement long ago. Only the old fought, the young were too precious to waste on war.
I had to destroy the Star Engine, and I had to take out the fleet with it. I called up the “White-out” protocol from my encrypted drive. Minds greater than mine had considered this eventuality, and had prepared a response for it. The plan was simple and suicidal in equal parts, but it was the best odds I had. I sent the request to the helm to plot the route for the flyby round the sun. Optimising routines calculated the best chance of taking the enemy by surprise.
The point of no return was when I signalled what I was doing to Central Command. The Cthauti would detect the FTL transmission instantaneously where-ever I was in the Solar System. So I had to emit the signal when it was too late for them to do anything about it. Helm responded with an FTL jump line that took me two hundred A.U.’s from the star to a point fifteen A.U.’s from the Star Engine.
I turned of weapons, reformatted my shield array for hard radiation. I broke out of orbit and began accelerating hard. Any sane person would tell you that when you enter orbit around a Star you want zero velocity relative to that Star. No one would say I was sane. My systems flooded my warnings as my backup A.I. expressed its dismay at my plan.
My FTL drive was charged and ready by the time I hit a quarter of the speed of light. The automated condition met, I jumped to hyperspace, the otherworldly energies bathing my hull for 5 seconds. The sensation interface generally made the experience feel like being in a warm bath, however you could change the default if you wanted. I once tried to make it feel like being on a boat, like when I sailed as a little girl.
I came out of hyperspace like a cat out of a burning barn. My targeting systems alerting me to the presence of defence drones floating just above the corona of the star. They glowed like fireflies, their mirrored hulls reflecting the sun’s rays of their shiny bellies. I sped towards them, unable to change from my predetermined course. I was still accelerating, my gravity drive burning as it fought the pull of the blazing Red sun and to drive me to insane speeds. Time was slowing down as I got closer to the speed of light, it made everything shrink around me.
The hyper processors that ran my psyche emulator were just enough to keep up. I shook as the defence drones fired their long range weapons at me, most of the energy refracting harmlessly of my hull. There was no point in engaging them, I would soon be out of their range and too fast to catch up with. I tried to relax as I began to rotate to spread the strain of hard radiation across my shields.
As I twirled I thought back on when I use to dance, my body hot and sweating from the exertion. I’d fallen in love on the beach, everybody dancing to the beautiful moon whose thousand cities twinkled above us. You could be in the middle of the ocean and know when you looked at the moon that Humanity was never far away if you need them. That is unless you were like me now and hundreds of light years from home.
I missed those components of my biological phase, before I had been uploaded into my space body. There was nothing like being free in the void of space, listening to the music of the spheres. My sleek processors were faster and more efficient than any biological brain could be, however they lacked the charm of the dreams I used to have.
I picked up the chatter from the defence drones, as they tried to alert the Star Engine to me. I reset my FTL drive to transmit my message to Central Command. While I was transmitting I could jump out of here, not that I was planning to.
I approached the Star Engine, close to two thirds the speed of light. My engines were no longer accelerating me forward. They were entirely focused on keeping my path straight at the matter stream between the star and its parasite.
My sensation emulator became confused at my exhilaration, as I became one of the fastest objects in existence. The shape of the star was distorting at this fraction of the speed of light, my helm struggling to cope with the mathematics of Relativity to keep me on course. Time was running forty percent slower for me now, giving them more time to react than I had. I turned off all non-essential process operations and accelerated my perception.
The star was warping in front of me, pulling up like a vast mountain the size of Terra Prime. It twisted like a tornado, giving the impression the sun was sprouting from the Star Engine. I primed the Cascade bomb, the most powerful weapon the Hegemony had ever designed.
I hit the hurricane, my shields just stopping me being flatted like an insect of a windshield. I had the kinetic energy of a large nuclear weapon. I left a massive void behind me, as I released the Cascade bomb it detonated instantly. That void crackled with quantum instability as the matter of the star rushed in to fill the void. The plasma density jumped, feeding the monstrous reaction taking place.
When I was biological I would have ranted and raved at the inventor of the Cascade bomb. Now I was a great grandmother it was different, anything to protect what is mine. The cascade wave propagated through the matter stream flowing into the Star Engine as I made it out and began shooting into space. Anything larger than a proton became unstable within the wake of the cascade, collapsing into a soup of gluons and death.
The effect propagated further until it enveloped the Star Engine which shifted like a melting candle and then exploded. The navy docked with it had started decoupling itself, but they weren’t fast enough. The wavy encompassed them, every sentient thought converted into raw meaningless entropy.
A supernova of light exploded behind me, the wave catching me at the speed of light. My hull burned, I would have screamed if I still had a throat. My engines super heating, as pure nuclear fury overtook everything else. I was blind, aimless in space, but I had won, I’d destroyed the behemoth.
The Cthauti were clearly master Astro-engineers, the Star Engine was the size of a moon, far bigger than anything the Hegemony of Humanity had built. Despite its beauty I felt no shame over my plan to destroy it. Docked with it were two hundred Cthauti ships, a navy fleet only four hundred light years from Terra Prime. This was their final recharge before an assault on my home, where my family live.
The first I saw my great grandson’s face I knew I would end up here. My granddaughter held him so peacefully in her arms, his beautiful facing lighting my world. My partner had tried to persuade me not to join, that we had so much time left. It didn’t matter, my future was worth less than that child. A week later I enlisted, having met the age requirement long ago. Only the old fought, the young were too precious to waste on war.
I had to destroy the Star Engine, and I had to take out the fleet with it. I called up the “White-out” protocol from my encrypted drive. Minds greater than mine had considered this eventuality, and had prepared a response for it. The plan was simple and suicidal in equal parts, but it was the best odds I had. I sent the request to the helm to plot the route for the flyby round the sun. Optimising routines calculated the best chance of taking the enemy by surprise.
The point of no return was when I signalled what I was doing to Central Command. The Cthauti would detect the FTL transmission instantaneously where-ever I was in the Solar System. So I had to emit the signal when it was too late for them to do anything about it. Helm responded with an FTL jump line that took me two hundred A.U.’s from the star to a point fifteen A.U.’s from the Star Engine.
I turned of weapons, reformatted my shield array for hard radiation. I broke out of orbit and began accelerating hard. Any sane person would tell you that when you enter orbit around a Star you want zero velocity relative to that Star. No one would say I was sane. My systems flooded my warnings as my backup A.I. expressed its dismay at my plan.
My FTL drive was charged and ready by the time I hit a quarter of the speed of light. The automated condition met, I jumped to hyperspace, the otherworldly energies bathing my hull for 5 seconds. The sensation interface generally made the experience feel like being in a warm bath, however you could change the default if you wanted. I once tried to make it feel like being on a boat, like when I sailed as a little girl.
I came out of hyperspace like a cat out of a burning barn. My targeting systems alerting me to the presence of defence drones floating just above the corona of the star. They glowed like fireflies, their mirrored hulls reflecting the sun’s rays of their shiny bellies. I sped towards them, unable to change from my predetermined course. I was still accelerating, my gravity drive burning as it fought the pull of the blazing Red sun and to drive me to insane speeds. Time was slowing down as I got closer to the speed of light, it made everything shrink around me.
The hyper processors that ran my psyche emulator were just enough to keep up. I shook as the defence drones fired their long range weapons at me, most of the energy refracting harmlessly of my hull. There was no point in engaging them, I would soon be out of their range and too fast to catch up with. I tried to relax as I began to rotate to spread the strain of hard radiation across my shields.
As I twirled I thought back on when I use to dance, my body hot and sweating from the exertion. I’d fallen in love on the beach, everybody dancing to the beautiful moon whose thousand cities twinkled above us. You could be in the middle of the ocean and know when you looked at the moon that Humanity was never far away if you need them. That is unless you were like me now and hundreds of light years from home.
I missed those components of my biological phase, before I had been uploaded into my space body. There was nothing like being free in the void of space, listening to the music of the spheres. My sleek processors were faster and more efficient than any biological brain could be, however they lacked the charm of the dreams I used to have.
I picked up the chatter from the defence drones, as they tried to alert the Star Engine to me. I reset my FTL drive to transmit my message to Central Command. While I was transmitting I could jump out of here, not that I was planning to.
I approached the Star Engine, close to two thirds the speed of light. My engines were no longer accelerating me forward. They were entirely focused on keeping my path straight at the matter stream between the star and its parasite.
My sensation emulator became confused at my exhilaration, as I became one of the fastest objects in existence. The shape of the star was distorting at this fraction of the speed of light, my helm struggling to cope with the mathematics of Relativity to keep me on course. Time was running forty percent slower for me now, giving them more time to react than I had. I turned off all non-essential process operations and accelerated my perception.
The star was warping in front of me, pulling up like a vast mountain the size of Terra Prime. It twisted like a tornado, giving the impression the sun was sprouting from the Star Engine. I primed the Cascade bomb, the most powerful weapon the Hegemony had ever designed.
I hit the hurricane, my shields just stopping me being flatted like an insect of a windshield. I had the kinetic energy of a large nuclear weapon. I left a massive void behind me, as I released the Cascade bomb it detonated instantly. That void crackled with quantum instability as the matter of the star rushed in to fill the void. The plasma density jumped, feeding the monstrous reaction taking place.
When I was biological I would have ranted and raved at the inventor of the Cascade bomb. Now I was a great grandmother it was different, anything to protect what is mine. The cascade wave propagated through the matter stream flowing into the Star Engine as I made it out and began shooting into space. Anything larger than a proton became unstable within the wake of the cascade, collapsing into a soup of gluons and death.
The effect propagated further until it enveloped the Star Engine which shifted like a melting candle and then exploded. The navy docked with it had started decoupling itself, but they weren’t fast enough. The wavy encompassed them, every sentient thought converted into raw meaningless entropy.
A supernova of light exploded behind me, the wave catching me at the speed of light. My hull burned, I would have screamed if I still had a throat. My engines super heating, as pure nuclear fury overtook everything else. I was blind, aimless in space, but I had won, I’d destroyed the behemoth.