The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3) Page 36

  He already had his control rod out, icons flowing across its pearly white surface. “Someone is tracing it from another Portal.”

  “T'Chillen,” Var'at hissed.

  “Oh, I bet they're pissed,” Aaron added.

  “They must have had space suits handy after all,” Minu thought aloud. “Okay, so much for rest. Saddle up, everyone. Ted, set the destination before they find us and lock up the Portal! Can you wipe the destination after we go through?”

  “Only if I stay behind. I can use a different route and catch up.”

  “No, you aren't qualified to go by yourself and I don't have time to set up a team.” The last of the Rasa piled aboard the second fighter, its door closing as the impellers spun up and the craft rose off the moss covered forest floor. Minu trotted up the ramp into the first fighter and gestured for Ted to join her. “I appreciate the gesture Ted, but not now. Get in here, and that's an order.” Ted gave her a nasty look, a girl less than a quarter his age giving him an order, but the truth was she wore three golden stars on her sleeve to five silver on his own. “We'll get ahead of them and then you can have a team of Rasa for escort to lead the snakes on a merry chase; for now get in this god damned ship.”

  It was a good plan, but they never actually got ahead of the snakes. The two fighters slid through the Portal into an ancient, crumbling Portal Spire. Instruments beeped warnings that the atmosphere was toxic. Minu wasn't concerned, the fighters were air tight, and they would only be there for moments. Ted was already programming for the next jump on a nearby Portal, since the first Portal was locked onto the last destination; when the first Portal came to life again. There on the other side were dozens of T'Chillen in full combat armor.

  “Shields!” Minu yelled and both fighters blurred momentarily as their energy shields came up. Beamcaster fire flashed through the Portal and the first soldiers rushed at them. “Aaron, discourage them!”

  “Right!” he said and spun the fighter around. Var'at, piloting the other craft, carefully maneuvered around to use the first fighter as cover. Aaron lined up facing the Portal just as the first soldiers came though. He squeezed the controls and brought the defenses online. The four under slung Shock rifles roared to life firing in rapid rolling sequence, flashing through the soldiers defensive shields and mowing them down. Bodies exploded in red bloody bombs of gore as a dozen T'Chillen died in five seconds. The survivors on the other side all dove for cover out of view of the Portal.

  “How’s that new Portal coming, Ted?”

  “Ready!”

  “Var'at, get through!” They watched on a rearward facing camera as the other fighter carefully maneuvered through. Minu bit down on her frustration as the formerly nimble craft flew like a critically injured kloth, taking almost a minute to do what should have taken seconds. Come on, come on, she willed as Aaron let loose with another salvo at a pair of soldiers that dared to poke their heads around.

  “They're gonna come through fast next time,” Aaron warned her. “All we're doing here is really pissing them off!”

  “Var'at is clear,” she told him.

  “When I turn around they're going to download on us!”

  “So don't turn around!”

  “Huh?”

  “Back through the Portal, silly!”

  Aaron gave her an incredulous look, and then despite the gravity of the situation, he laughed as he used the rear camera and backed towards the other Portal. The T'Chillen were furious and they tried to breach through their Portal again and again. Each time they paid in blood, and were rewarded with failure. Aaron had the measure of the fighter’s weapons system and there was no getting by him. He kept up his fire even after they passed through the second Portal and onto a world so brightly lit that the view ports polarized to dim the cabin. Portals were one way to travelers and solid matter (depending on which direction they were activated from), but opaque to energy and light.

  “Ted, close the Portal and set our next destination right away!”

  “On it,” he said as the Portal swirled into inactivity and instantly came back to life. But an instant later it went dark again.

  “Ted?”

  “I'm working on it...” Once more the Portal came on, and just as quickly turned off. “Damnable machine,” he growled and quickly brought up his control rod's diagnostics. Holographic symbols floated in air which he moved around with quick pushing and pulling motions, occasionally twisting one symbol or another. Minu watched the Portal nervously while Aaron carefully lined up the fighter and readied weapons should the T'Chillen suddenly appear. “Okay,” Ted said finally, “if I understand this blasted thing well enough, it is having difficulty and is in a safe mode while it assesses its functions.”

  “Never heard of that one before,” Minu said.

  “Nor have I,” Ted admitted, “and I probably know as much about these Portals as anyone alive.”

  Minu looked from him to the Portal outside and scratched her chin nervously. I wonder if he knows that some weird aliens live inside the thing? Many older Chosen 'meditated' to the energy swirls, but to her knowledge she was the only one ever to have a conversation with the Weavers, not to mention having one intervene and save her life. But that was years ago, and they wouldn't talk to her now. The last time she'd tried they only had one thing to say. “We wish to talk to Pip.” Minu turned and looked at the pod secured in the rear of her fighter and sighed. Too many mysteries, too many unanswered questions. Already one of Var'at's soldiers lost his life for this quest, and she didn't even know if there was anything to be gained.

  “Can you tell how long it will be in safe mode?”

  Ted looked at the control rod for a moment, flipping a few icons before speaking. “I haven't a clue, sorry.”

  “Well at least the T'Chillen can't come through either,” Aaron said as he shut down the offensive systems.

  “We have another problem,” Var'at said over the radio link, having been in on the entire exchange. “This world has a breathable atmosphere, but the temperature is forty-five degrees, and climbing. It is still early in the day, so we are going to be getting very hot, very soon.”

  Chapter 6

  January 12th, 522 AE

  Planet 'Sunshine', Galactic Frontier

  They made camp, not because they wanted to, but because there was no choice. Even thought it was blisteringly hot outside, it proved cooler to set up solar shields between the two fighters then to force the crafts cooling systems to operate on the ragged edge. They also had limited power in the fighters. Thanks to the solar shields converting the blazing light of two suns to energy, they could hold their own outside. The parked fighters quickly became cigar shaped ovens, too hot even for the Rasa. Everyone found a spot outside under the solar shields and relaxed. The ground was rocky and uncomfortable, and the hours seemed to crawl past.

  “As if the two suns weren't bad enough,” Minu said as she used an instrument to check the sky once more, “their rotation is slow as well.”

  “How long until nightfall?” Bjorn asked, wiping a rag across his wet and wrinkled brow.

  “The blue-white sun will set in six hours, the yellow in ten. At least it should cool down some when the nasty hot one sets.”

  It was a good plan, except the system wasn't a binary after all. Two hours later as they were trying to eat in the dripping heat, Aaron stood and looked to the horizon, a hand held up to shield his eyes. “You're not going to believe this,” he said and pointed. Humans and Rasa gathered to watch as the third sun of the trinary system began a slow climb into the sky.

  “I guess I get to work on my tan,” Cherise said in a deadpan.

  “Looks like a red giant,” Ted said, Bjorn nodding in agreement. The sun was at least twice the size of the others, and blood red in color. “Not too hot, at least.”

  “Hot enough,” Minu mumbled. Already she felt its additional heat. “How much can we survive?” she asked Aaron, the only scout of the group and the best versed in difficult survival situ
ations.

  “Well, if we break out the other solar shields to make this more of an enclosure, and use the power from the fighters to supplement the cool air blowers...we should be okay to about sixty five. Maybe seventy, but that's pushing the material of the solar shields. Much more and the moliplas structure will start destabilizing. It’s not really made for that sort of extreme.

  Minu looked down at the little instrument she carried. Fifty eight degrees, now fifty nine. “Break out the other shields, let’s get to work, fast.”

  The temperature climbed at nearly two degrees an hour for the next five hours. As the needle hovered at sixty eight Minu felt the ragged edges of panic tickling her consciousness. Their solar shields were set blocking all direct sunlight from reaching them and all four of the cold air blowers worked at maximum. Just one of the devices would have been able to take a ten thousand cubic meters space from fifty degrees to freezing in hours. The space between the fighters hovered just below fifty. Minu had been hot before, but this was horrible. It made Naomi in the Desert Tribe feel like a cool afternoon at Steven's Pass. They lay around on moliplas cots and chairs trying to breathe and hoping for relief. The fighters were uninhabitable ovens.

  “What do we do if we can't get out of here?” she asked Ted who was sitting in a chair next to her. Both Bjorn and Ted enjoyed prime seats next to blowers. She hadn't allowed any discussion on the matter; both were older than the rest and more susceptible to the horrendous heat. Despite that, the space around them wasn't more than five degrees cooler.

  “Well,” he said and wiped sweat from his dripping forehead, “we'll have to dig a shelter. Aaron says there is some basic engineering equipment stowed on the fighters. The problem is how cold it will get tonight.”

  “Right, so we might have to work quickly.” Ted nodded and relaxed, trying to conserve energy. He kept the Portal control rod sitting on the arm of his chair, set to alert him the moment the Portal came on line. The big problem now was that even should it activate, the fighters were so hot she doubted they could survive long enough to pilot them through to the other side.

  Minu looked over to check her Rasa team members. They seemed to be tolerating the temperature better, but Var'at assured her it was beyond their 'normal' range as well. They all had water bulbs from which they took intermittent sips while constantly panting, rather like a dog. Minu knew enough of their biology to be sure that they would suffer horribly if they ran out of water. Luckily there was plenty, even if it was nearly the temperature she preferred her tea to be. Cherise dozed on a cot. Growing up in the desert taught her to rest in the heat of the day. Aaron tolerated the heat in quiet misery, leaning against a rock close enough to an air blower to be somewhat comfortable.

  With nothing more to do, she settled into a chair and read through some of her father's logs. It was just too hot to sleep.

  Three hours later, the blue white monster well below the horizon, the temperature had dropped below that when they arrived and was slowly decreasing further as the yellow sun began to be consumed by the edge of the world. “I never thought forty would feel nice,” Minu said as she stuck her head outside the solar shields, if only briefly. Many of them now sported first degree burns. Aaron had a nasty second degree burn patch where he'd slipped during the height of the suns and brushed against one of the dualloy poles holding up the solar shields. The Rasa, ever practical, cooked some meat for their meal on a rock just outside the shields, using a dualloy rod poking through the side to turn it and retrieve the finished meal.

  “Quite comfortable,” Var'at agreed, not noticing the way Minu rolled her eyes.

  “Who the hell would put a Portal in this barbecue, anyway?” Aaron wondered aloud as he rubbed burn gel on his shoulder.

  “Wasn't always this way,” Ted said. Now that the temperature was dropping, Bjorn and he were working with the formidable amount of instruments they'd brought along for the ride. “Looks like it’s been majorly screwed at some point.”

  “Probably a few million years ago,” Bjorn confirmed. “There is still a lot of oxygen, and bacteria in the air. The planet’s not dead, but close to it.

  “I'd say it was screwed from day one,” Minu said, making a dismissive gesture to where the yellow sun was still setting.

  “Oh, that would make it hot, to be sure.” He'd cracked open a rock they'd dug up from a small pit and was working an analyzer over it. “But someone made it a lot worse.”

  “How so?”

  “That red giant is new.”

  “Without a doubt,” Bjorn agreed as he reviewed the data.

  “Hold on,” Aaron barged in, “I'm not a scientist like you egg heads, but I do know that new stars aren't ever red giants. That's an old, dying star.”

  “Correct!” Bjorn crowed. “Give the man a cookie.”

  “I'd settle for an ice tea,” he said, making Minu chuckle. “So if you agree with me...”

  “I'm not agreeing, just saying you’re right. This star was begun as a red giant. And billions of years after the other two.”

  Minu waited for details but Bjorn's attention was drawn to some of the readings on the instruments and he completely forgot the conversation, so Ted took it up. “This red giant was probably a gas giant, something like Jupiter in our old home of Sol, though probably more like Saturn.”

  “Why Saturn?” Minu asked.

  “Well, they are both failed stars, so is Neptune, for that matter, but Saturn is smaller than Jupiter and with less hydrogen. Most stars are just big massive balls of hydrogen. They get bigger, and bigger, until they light off. We're still not sure how that happens. Jupiter could technically have lit off, though it probably wouldn't have lived that long.”

  “Would have probably fizzled,” Bjorn agreed, surprising them that he was paying attention after all.

  Ted gave him an annoyed look and continued. “So this medium sized gas giant, full of helium, argon, and other very much less suitable fusion food, gets compressed and lit off. The shortage of hydrogen pushes it quickly into an aged sequence, in this case a red giant. Probably burned up a couple planets in the process.”

  “So let me get this right,” Minu said, “someone, no doubt the Concordians, turned a gas giant purposely into a new star? This planet was already hotter than hell, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “So why would they do it?”

  “Murder,” Cherise said from behind her.

  Bjorn nodded enthusiastically. “And a very selective, careful one too. It guaranteed that very little would survive on the planet, but it would still hold an atmosphere, and save any structures that might be there. I wouldn't be surprised if they lit that thing at just the right time so it was on the far side of the solar system, and thereby protect this planet from all the nasty solar shock waves and other birth debris. They did murder this planet, and did it in a most slow, nasty sort of way.”

  “Probably took years for everyone here to die,” Ted agreed. He had the control rod in his hand again and gestured with it towards the Portal. “Of course we're here a million years later, we won't last nearly that long.”

  “What do you mean?” Minu asked, her pulse starting to race. Suddenly the sweat rolling down her back felt ice cold.

  “The Portal isn't in a diagnostic, it's locked. One way travel, here only. Not only did they turn the planet lethal, but they trapped everyone here so they would all die. And we walked into a million year old trap.”

  As the red giant crawled across the sky and the temperature dropped below thirty, they explored a bit and confirmed that there would be no worry of a T'Chillen assault through the Portal. A few horribly desiccated snake corpses were found only a few meters from the Portal. They'd come through on foot or belly as the case may be; and likely died within hours. The T'Chillen knew of the trap, and had obliged the stupid humans and allowed them to retreat through the Portal to their doom.

  Once the fighters cooled off enough to enter, Minu took Cherise and a squad of Rasa up to look around. Even
with the power from the solar shields, one afternoon of use on the coolers consumed ten percent of the fighter’s power stores. They had food and water for weeks, but without shelter they would be dead in less than ten days.

  Minu flew a one hundred kilometer search pattern at five thousand meters up. The sensors at that range could give good readings more than a hundred kilometers out. Two hours later, with half the giant red disk dropping below the horizon, they landed the fighter. Minu climbed out, happy to see that the others had made progress excavating a pit in the rocky ground. “Not a damned thing,” she told them as she walked up. The temperature was below twenty now and the humans already wore their light uniform jackets. “No energy signatures, no signs of structures, nothing.”

  “Not surprising,” Ted said as he analyzed some of the rocks coming up out of the pit, “with the swings of temperatures being so severe, even dualloy and ceramic concrete would be stressed in only a few thousand years.”

  Bjorn stuck his head out of the pit, covered in dirt and bleeding from several cuts. “I had no idea digging a hole was this much fun!”

  Minu smiled obligingly and rolled her eyes when he went back to digging. If he wasn't so damned brilliant, she'd be certain he was completely in the throes of senile dementia. “Did you find anything down there, and are we going to be able to make a semi-permanent shelter?”

  “Yes, and probably not,” Ted answered, as directly as always. “We know that whatever happened here was more like salting the fields, than burning down the village.”

  “So they lit that star just to be sure nothing would ever be able to live here again? How'd you figure that out?”

  Ted held up a rock and gestured to an instrument. “We got hard decayed radioactives below the old water table. Half-life is expired, of course, but we still have traces.” He accessed a file. “This stuff is an almost perfect match with what you brought from GCX01999 several years ago.”

  “Squeenhome?” Minu said, more to herself than anyone. They'd started calling that devastated world by the new name after she'd found out from Strong Arm that it was the world of their birth.