Leon checked the mission logs, they had been on mission for six-hundred-and-twenty-two days, if you started counting from their very first warp jump. Nearly two whole years had passed, Leon shook his head slightly at the thought. So much on the ship had changed, the interactions between the crew had become nuanced and some of the crew were now in steady relationships as well. He thought of Natalia and how long it had taken her to finally break through to him and he flushed red slightly. He had been a stubborn ass when they had first met, but he was glad she had gotten through to him, she was honestly the most incredible person he had ever met. Caring and honest with a deep understanding of the trauma that afflicted his soul. She wanted to help him and he trusted her with his deepest feelings, he knew that she loved him and he loved her in return. Leon wasn't sure if he would have been able to make it this far without her help to get over some of his issues and old scars.
He looked to his side towards Joice, she had been a huge help as well. The cheerful woman had seriously stepped up in the months since she had been asked to take up her position as his second in command. Several of the problems that he had had trouble dealing with, such as keeping the peace between all members of the crew while they were all stuck on the same boat, she had smoothed out like fine silk. He knew that she had been the right choice, despite her own protestations and reservations about the fact.
They had just jumped into their current location, of immediate interest was the large swollen mass of the red giant that dominated the inner system. Even from the incredible distance they were viewing it from, it was eye catching. The light it emitted was a bloody red, the shimmers of titanic coronal mass ejections making the star’s outline seem somewhat fuzzy and indistinct. Of all the systems that they had visited thus far on their mission, this was the first giant they had stopped to observe. Leon hadn't picked this particular star for any reason, it had just been the closest and seemed like a convenient layover.
Terry had been excited by the news though, as the ship's astronomer she had gone into hyper mode when she learned that they would be stopping at a red giant star. As the nearest giant to Earth was some distance away, the ability to get near perfect data on such an object was too much for her to pass up.
He looked at her now, she was leaning close to her console, absorbed in the readouts and various system analysis charts. She seemed to be totally in her element and he smiled. It was nice to see that even after everything they had seen on their mission so far, that she could still get so excited over something as simple as the state of a star. He wondered to himself what it all meant to her, he knew she had joined the mission for her own reasons as well as the stated mission of the ship.
Putting the thought out of his mind for the moment he instead asked Taylor “Taylor, have you started any scans of the inner system yet?”
Taylor nodded and replied “Scanning for terrestrial planets now, though I'm not expecting to find anything. When that thing blew up it probably absorbed anything close.” He said to Leon.
Leon nodded to the man and asked “Well, who really knows what's here. Not us, that's for sure.”
This brought a light chuckle from the man as he turned back to his work. Leon watched the other members of the bridge crew work, Samuel was getting them into a stable position without getting too close to the star. The radiation shielding of the UNSS Leif Erikson was good, but it wasn't infallible. The farther they were able to stay from the giant while still getting good readings, the better.
He knew they were in no real danger from the star, but as he watched the furious boiling rage of its bloated surface he couldn't help but feel a little apprehension. Stars of this type generally detonated in spectacular explosions called supernovae, and when the most dangerous part of the close-range detonation traveled at the speed of light, they would have almost no warning if such an event were to occur.
But Terry had assured him that the star was in their databanks from Earth, it likely had another few thousand years at the least before it detonated in a core collapse supernova. This brought a little comfort, but just a little. Mankind wasn't built to understand the true scales and powers involved here, the star was essentially a huge nuclear explosion loosely held together by gravity. Like ten trillion bombs exploding every second.
The thought still hurt his brain a little to think about, the fact that everything humanity had ever done paled to such utter insignificance next to even a single star, and then realizing that there were more stars in existence than grains of sand on the entirety of Earth. Well, it was bound to mess with anyone’s head.
He watched the main picture feed in awe, he loved his job, being the leader of such an amazing group of people on such an incredible mission.
Taylor spoke up, breaking the silence “I'm not getting any readings on inner system planets.”
Terry responded to her husband's comment saying “That makes sense. When the star entered its giant phase it would have ejected a huge amount of hot plasma, this could very well have destroyed any close planets that were not absorbed by its expansion.”
Leon huffed slightly, his restraints jerking slightly at the moment. He was a little disappointed. It was a far cry to have hoped for any kind of life in the system, given that the vastly increased luminosity of the growing giant would have destroyed any atmosphere the closer planets might have held. But who knew, maybe a colder planet could have benefitted, developing some primitive form of life in the few tens of millions of years the star gave it. Stranger things had likely happened.
“Any comets or asteroid belts in the middle system area we should be concerned about then Taylor?” He asked the communications specialist.
Taylor glanced at him over his shoulder before he answered. “I haven't completed my scans. This may take a bit longer as there is more area to cover.”
“That's perfectly fine, get started and update me as you see fit.” Leon told Taylor, the man just nodded and went back to monitoring his screens.
Leon turned his attention to Samuel as he said “We are holding steady?”
Samuel just nodded and made some adjustments to the navigation console in front of him. “We are getting some significant stellar winds here, but nothing the ship can't handle, though I don't recommend trying to hold position for more than a few days. We are burning small amounts of fuel for the nav corrections after all.” The pilot said to Leon.
The Leif Erikson had vast internal fuel tanks as it was designed to be completely self sufficient. They could refuel by harvesting ice from comets and other such things, but the tanks were finite. They could refuel, but they had a limited amount of time they could stay in the inner system area under such conditions. They would eventually need to move out of the inner system a bit or find a comet to refuel off of.
“Keep us in position for the moment. I don't want to move out till we know there is nothing else here.” Leon said. They had at least a full day if they really wanted to stick around, he saw no reason to stay that long however. There was likely nothing interesting here, no planets, no gas giants, just the baleful red eye of the distended star.
Samuel nodded and Leon turned back to Terry and asked “Any new readings from the star?”
As the ship's primary astronomer it was Terry’s job to search for viable star systems harboring the conditions for planets with life. Although this was her primary duty, she was not going to miss out on an opportunity to do some additional observations in the meantime.
The ship and its mission were heading south, well south in relation to the galactic core as seen from Earth. They were moving towards the outer edge of the Milky Way galaxy at about three hundred times the speed of light, but even at that incredible speed, it would take them a solid century to reach the edge of the galaxy. More than four hundred years to cross its entirety. Leon often found himself in awe at the sheer size and scale of it all, back on Earth he had never really had a perspective of how vast the universe was. But now that he was out in the thick of it he sometimes found his mind being overwhelmed by the sheer scope of it all. He tried his best to push brain numbing reality to the back of his conscious mind as he once more focused on the bridge around him.
Terry and Taylor sat next to each other, in arms reach. To the far right was Sabine at her engineering console, the sheer wealth of data displayed on the screen enough to oversaturate his eyes even from his seat in the center of the room. Samuel sat to the front a bit, closest to the main display screen and having a different type of console, his was optimized for small adjustments and precision over bulk data. And then finally to his side and slightly forwards was Joice, his second in command and the crew’s favorite cook.
He smiled to himself, he didn't know what he would do without every single one of them around to help run the ship’s systems. He didn't have the knowledge nor the expertise to run it all alone and he would be damned if he gave Henry too much input. The thought of the semi smart program gaining some semblance of free will caused his very mind to shudder in horror. That would lead to another Jupiter incident, but out here in the vast empty darkness, there would be no help or relief, only a slow and grueling death as the ship's systems shut down one by one.
It was not helpful to dwell on such things and he attempted to bring himself back to the moment. It took a few more grim seconds before he was able to claw his way out of the mental hole he had dug, but once clear he could see Terry muttering excitedly to Taylor.
After another moment of excited chatter, she spoke up and said “The solar wind analyzers are picking up trace amounts of neon and oxygen in the stellar wind.” she left it at that.
Leon looked at her for a moment before he said “Okay I'm stumped, what does it mean?”
Terry smiled and shook her head slightly before turning back to her console and pointing at a few lines of data. “Here it shows the star's ejected stellar winds. You can see hydrogen and helium as you would expect, but also carbon, neon and oxygen. This proves that the star’s core has contracted and is now fusing heavier elements than it would otherwise be able to.” she said triumphantly.
“But I thought we already knew they did that?” Leon stated bluntly.
Terry shook her head and said “Sure, we had spectral analysis to determine the elements were indeed present. But this is the first time they have actually been recorded. It's exciting to see all of the postulation and hypothetical work being proven right!” she finished saying excitedly.
Leon just smiled and tried to understand, sure he had heard about red giants before, but he had never really put much thought into it. In the military there wasn't all that much time for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, there had always been some minor conflict or situation that needed to be taken care of. His right arm twitched involuntarily as he thought about his time in the service, before he knew it he found himself rubbing it. He stopped and glanced around hoping no one had seen, he sighed quietly as it seemed as though everyone else had been too busy to notice his discomfort.
He replied to Terry “That's good news then. At least there was a reason for coming here after all.” He added quietly.
Almost as if to spite his previous doubt, Taylor spoke up in a slightly excited voice “Uh, Leon? I'm getting a sensor reading that doesn't seem to make any sense.”
Leon shifted uncomfortably in his harness, the zero gravity of the bridge affording little comfort to his movement. “What kind of readings? Dangerous ones?” He asked the man.
Taylor looked at him out of his peripheral vision for a moment before he responded. “I don't think so. It just doesn't match what I was expecting. I was scanning the asteroid belt region and got a return that was much too strong, almost amplified in fact. But there isn't anything on scope that I can detect visually. If the sun is on the far side of whatever it is the scopes will have an incredibly difficult time picking it up as the shadowed side might be towards us… If we could get closer then I would be able to pinpoint its location using our earlier scans.” Taylor sat back in his chair, seemingly at a loss.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Leon frowned, whatever it was sounded like it could be dangerous. But what could it be? What would capture and amplify the signals before bouncing them back to the ship. Or were they being deliberately strengthened?
With no way to tell from their current position he looked at Joice and asked “Do you think it's safe to investigate?”
Joice shrugged her shoulders as best she could in the microgravity environment and replied “I don't see any logical reason it wouldn't be, it doesn't seem to be actively malicious. It's most likely some sort of natural phenomenon, still, it wouldn't hurt to be cautious.” She added.
Leon decided that there wasn't any reason not to investigate. After all, their mission was to scour the stars for signs of intelligence. ‘Maybe after over six hundred days of tiresome work, they had finally found something?’ He speculated internally.
“Samuel!” He called to the younger man who jerked slightly at the sudden noise. “Plot us a jump in the direction of that anomaly, try to get us close but not too close. Taylor, do you have a reasonable idea of where it is?” Leon said.
Taylor nodded, his hair bouncing gently as he turned back to his console. He tapped on the screen a bit before saying “It seems to be about seven light minutes away, forty-eight degrees off the port side and almost perfectly in line with our current position. It's a bit closer to the star, but we should be fine as long as we stay in the shadows, radiation might spike a bit on approach though.” He added in a cautionary tone.
Leon gave a small gesture and said “That's fine, we won't be exposed long enough to be an issue either way.”
Joice added “We should have the warp drives pre-charged just in case, we can always power them down if we need to.”
Nodding at the wisdom in her words, he said “That's a good idea, Sabine, I'm sure you and Chad can make that happen?”
Sabine gave him a smile and an affirmative before he said “Okay, prepare for jump, five minutes if you are ready Samuel.” When Samuel nodded he put the ship into general alert, the slowly flashing yellow lights signaling an encroaching warp jump.
After four minutes the flashing of the light increased in speed and then turned a solid yellow before the ship blinked away in a self made event horizon of pure violent energy.
As always, the warp translation was an unpleasant experience. Luckily for him, this time he only experienced an unnatural chill that seemed to freeze his bones to ice in his body before the feeling vanished almost as soon as it had occurred. He breathed a sigh of relief, sometimes it wasn't so bad, other times he felt as if his body was being stretched across all of reality. The molecules pulled light years apart and the sensation of being stretched almost too much to comprehend.
“Whugh…”. Leon groaned lightly, letting out a rush of air. He chuckled slightly to himself as Taylor responded.
“That's an understatement, geez. They couldn't make breaking the fundamental laws of the universe more comfortable? I thought the guys that built this ship were smart!” He snickered as Terry punched his shoulder lightly, Leon didn't think it had been in anger, more likely just her silent way of agreeing with her husband.
The two of them had grown as people since they had started the mission. Taylor was more sincere and personable while he seemed to have given Terry a confidence boost in return.
“How long?” He asked, the question directed towards Samuel.
Almost as soon as he asked the question his brain seemed to turn to molten sugar before fluffing out into a delicious confectionary treat. “Aackkk!” Was all he managed to gurgle out before Samuel replied.
“Now…”
Leon grumbled something unintelligible and a little impolite under his breath before saying “What the fuck was that!?”
Samuel actually had the decency to look a little embarrassed as he said “Well, we are in a high energy density zone so I figured we wouldn't want to spend any more time in warp that was strictly necessary.”
“So what? You plotted a seven light minute jump at full power?” He all but shouted.
Joice shook her head, her golden blond hair flailing as she said “Leon, calm down. I will admit that was singularly unpleasant, but Samuel was just trying to be practical. Last time we exited warp in such a high energy density zone we got stuck inside a nebula for a day.”
He stopped and took a few deep breaths, his internal strife at war with his generally calm demeanor. Once he felt more at peace with himself he apologized to Samuel. “I'm sorry Samuel, she’s right of course. You did the right thing, but please in the future, a little bit of a warning?”
Samuel replied sheepishly “Yeah, I guess I could have said something before we jumped.”
Leon just nodded and then turned to Taylor. “Okay, we should be close now. Can you pinpoint the location of the signal anomaly?”
Taylor glanced at Terry and took a slightly shaky breath before nodding “I will get right on it Leon. Give me just a few minutes.”
“Take as long as you need, but we are on a clock here.” He said. As if to demonstrate this a bright green flash manifested in the corner of his vision. He recognised it almost immediately, a cosmic ray visual phenomenon. Almost entirely harmless, they were caused by high energy radiation interacting either with his retina or directly with the visual centers of his brain. Not something to worry about, but a little alarming as it meant that a more significant portion of the solar radiation from the red giant was making its way through the ship’s radiation shielding.
Switching on his voidsuit’s geiger counter, he was immediately met with the sound of angry clicks and warbles as its radiation detectors spiked to life. He swore lightly as he realized they were getting bombarded with almost one hundred and twenty microsieverts per hour on the bridge. The bridge was by far the most exposed section of the ship however, the console was only registering about twenty microsieverts per hour in the habitat rings, still high but not dangerously so.
He thought about mentioning it to the others but decided against it, it was just one more thing they would be worried about, once they were safely in the shadow of whatever was reflecting their signals they should be well and truly fine. Damn if the red giant wasn't trying its damndest to kill them all though. To think that the radiation was this high even so far from the star was mind boggling, the power of it was truly incredible.
Sabine spoke suddenly “Warp drives are recharging, should be ready for an out system jump in about twelve more minutes if needed.”
Leon thanked her “That's good news. Samuel, be prepared to jump immediately if me or Joice gives the order.” He told him with a look at his second, Joice just gave a grim nod in reply. She understood that he meant for her to take charge if he became incapacitated for any reason. He continued “Samuel, take us in as soon as we get a clear reading from the sensors. Taylor, any progress on that?”
Taylor shook his head and muttered something to himself angrily before speaking audibly “There is an awful lot of interference coming from the star, the signal is being partially scrambled.” A short pause in which no one spoke was followed by “I believe I can direct us close enough to get a visual on the target though.”
“Do it, Samuel, move us out.” Leon commanded. The pilot gave a quick nod and after a moment the slight tug of acceleration could be felt pulling him into his seat. They would need to get out of this radiation quickly before it started to become an issue.
Samuel spoke up “It looks like it's going to take more than twenty minutes to reach the anomaly. We are getting some pretty high radiation spikes though.” The man finished a bit worriedly.
Leon asked “Is it interfering with the ship's systems?”
Sabine shook her head and replied “No, the ship's systems are hardened against much higher radiation than this. Though we should probably make sure to take some anti-rads and drink plenty of water after we get there.”
Joice said “Leon, we should be careful. We are flying straight into the solar wind, it could be an issue if any kind of large CME or burst plasma discharge happens.”
Leon groaned slightly as he thought about it. “How much warning would we have if one occurred in our path Terry?”
Terry looked back at him as if making sure she had heard him properly before she said “Well, we would likely have as much as twenty hours before the actual particle storm arrived, but the initial radiation burst would arrive at the speed of light giving us exactly zero warning. If we got hit by a bigger one we could get bombarded with as much as forty thousand millisieverts, that's about ten times a lethal dose.” she said in a grim tone.
“Fuck…” Leon heard Samuel swear.
Leon looked at Joice and asked “I don't have a good feeling about this, are we taking too great a risk?”
She just shook her head and said “I'm not sure Leon, the chances of that occurring are incalculably low, and we still don't know what we are flying towards. It could be something astounding or a pile of ice. Until we know what it is we won't have a clear basis for whether or not this is a worthwhile venture. If we leave now then we never will.”
Leon took a second to process all this new information before he decided upon a course of action. “I think we should keep going. I don't think we are in any real danger from a CME, and there is the potential for this to be something big.” He looked around at everyone on the bridge, slowly they all nodded in agreement, including Samuel.
Samuel turned back to his console and said “Alright then. Here we go, we should be getting into the visual range of the object anytime now.”
The bridge went quiet for a few moments after that as they all waited for some form of confirmation. Leon thought about trying to say something to break the tension that seemed to be building when Taylor sat up straight and exclaimed “What the hell? That's not. It's a…”
Leon jerked as the verbal assault hit him, recovering his composure he asked “What? What happened?” Taylor said nothing for a moment, he just hit a few buttons on his console and projected an image onto the main view screen. It took Leon a moment to realize what he was looking at.
On the screen was a large dark mass, the barest glimmers of sunlight peeking around its edges. It was the color of dusty gray rock, but as they got closer and the image began to resolve a bit more he realized it was far too uniform to be an asteroid. The straight lines and edges were much too perfect to be natural, the look of intelligent design becoming more apparent the closer he looked. Having no reference for scale he couldn't tell how big the thing was, but it seemed to be titanic.
“What is that…” he breathed, his voice the only noise in the still room.
It was another moment before anyone responded, but eventually Taylor cleared his throat and said “Whatever it is, it's huge, well over two thousand meters long and over half that tall. It seems to be in a stable orbit around the star, though how it's maintained its position this close to the star is a mystery to me.”
Soon after, the Leif Erikson was plunged into the shadow of the installation, the radiation counters calmed down to a bare whisper and the shadows jumped into focus as the ship's sensors were no longer staring straight into the star. Immediately it became painfully obvious the structure was artificial, the surface pitted and scarred by innumerable impacts and wear. He could make out a few places that looked to have been doorways and even something that mimicked the appearance of a radio antenna. All around was the feeling of age and neglect. The steel girders worn down and the metal plates partially buckled and pitted with tiny craters. The structure must have been truly ancient for it to have accumulated so much damage.
“Well, I think this proves the existence of aliens alright.” Samuel said suddenly. Taylor let out a sharp bark of laughter as Leon gave a snort.
“I guess it does at that then. Wow, look at the damage to its surface, it must be thousands of years old. Have you detected any signals originating from it Taylor?” he asked.
Taylor leaned back slightly in his chair, his harness keeping him from floating free. “Nothing. It's actually quiet as a tomb here, the structure seems to be blocking almost all of the star's radiation.” he announced.
Leon watched the station through the ship's sensors, it seemed to be cold and dead, just a bare percent of a degree warmer than the background of space, though it was likely the other side exposed to the star was boiling hot in comparison. The design of the structure was off putting to him, not in its divergent design, but instead in how similar it actually was to human construction. Whomever had constructed the platform seemed to have at least had a similar understanding of engineering as the folks back home. He could make out corroded maintenance walkways, broken blast doors, and even the damaged radio antenna from earlier. It was downright eerie how similar it looked to some of the stations in orbit over Earth, just far larger in scale.
“Oh man… You know what this means now right?” Samuel spoke up from the other side of the bridge.
Leon turned to look at the man as Sabine asked “No, what do you mean?”
Samuel had all of their attention now, he seemed to hesitate a second before he spoke again. “We need to get on that thing and look around.”
Taylor shook his head and flinched at the words before Terry patted his shoulder and whispered to him in a reassuring way. Leon himself frowned, Samuel was right. They couldn't pass up the opportunity this newest discovery presented. It was validation, proof that Humanity was not alone in the universe. Well, at least that they were not the first. Looking back out to the hulking wreck through the ship's sensors, Leon realized that this might be the first truly breaking discovery they had made on their journey. Intelligence other than them existed, and it seemed to have left them a clue as to who they were and what they had accomplished. With luck they would find some evidence or signs of who these long gone people had been. Their culture and technology might in turn help to elevate Humanity to even loftier heights.
Leon smiled and said “Yes… Yes we do, Samuel. Are you willing to go? Your knowledge of propulsion systems and ship design would be incredibly useful.”
Samuel straightened in his chair as much as it would allow before responding “Yes it would.”