Well Under Way ”The time has come for us to engage the enemy.” Colonel Tunk of INRA stood at the front of the briefing room, hands clasped behind her straight back and feet shoulder-width apart. The entire wall behind her was filled with a holographic map of the 200 cubic parsecs of the galaxy that surrounded the big flagship they were aboard. On the map, about one hundred light years away from the center, a region of space was marked in bright red, denoting the last sighting of that dangerous alien opponent, the Thargoids. The fifteen pilots of Chariot squadron watched intently as Tunk laid out the situation. ”We’ll engage them here, in the outskirts of this system.” Another region flashed blue. ”The idea is that we’ll do a swift and brief attack, merely as a means of intel gathering. We want to know if they have any new weapons or tactics, and we’re hoping this attack will flush out things like that. We’ll use mainly larger ships, but fighters will fill supporting roles. Remember that we haven’t fought the Thargoids in earnest for a long time, so in this first clash we will come out in force, with a sizeable number of ships.” The colonel consulted her notes before continuing. ”From previous experience it is clear that the use of hyperdrive engines in the vicinity of Thargoid warships is not always a good idea. Although our hyperdrives are now very different from the ones we used during the last war, we don’t want to take chances. For that reason, among the first ships in will be three Wyverns that will force open a wormhole in the vicinity of the battlefield. When you retreat, leave through there and *not* by ordinary witchspace. The Wyverns are scientific craft and lightly armed, and will therefore retreat as soon as the wormhole is open. This means that they will not be around to keep it stable, so the other end of the wormhole will be migratory and there’s no telling exactly where you’ll emerge after you escape through it. But it will be in a safe region and at the most three hundred light years away from here. Individual orders will be given to you in your ships. Prince Hildgarn is in command of the operation. All right, get going.” - - - Ranie’s Viper Mk 2 was among the first ships to arrive at the designated battlefield to pinpoint the position of the enemy ships and secure an area for the Wyverns to work in. It was an empty section of space, far away from any star, but directly in the path of the oncoming Thargoid fleet. The enemy was still not visible against the backdrop of starry space, but the massive fleet showed up clearly as a single, enormous blip on the long-range scanners. They would soon be arriving. The Wyverns, medium-sized and unwieldy-looking craft, appeared in real-space and formed up to start opening the wormhole, and Ranie felt the tension mounting as more and more INRA ships of many different types arrived and made preparations to set up proper attack formations. The audio comm-channel was open, as the rules of engagement required. Receiving second-priority in-combat information aurally was a well established and battle-proven method, freeing up other senses for the crucial first-hand input. Ranie’s channel was tuned to his own squadron, and although ships were pouring into the system, there was as yet little to be heard on the comm. Such a contrast, he thought, from his time as a sergeant in the Federal Military. There, the comm-channels were always alive with inane and inconsequential chatter, be it during training missions or actual combat. He hardly had time to finish the thought before the first message came in. ”This is Serpent Leader. Wormhole is now open. Closing in precisely two hours. We have left a controller-buoy at the entrance, so try to stay away from that until you leave the system. Serpent Leader out.” The three Wyverns plunged into the invisible vortex of the wormhole one after the other and were gone. The small device they had left behind would keep it open for the duration of the operation and self-destruct when the system was empty of allied vessels. It would also collapse the wormhole if alien ships approached to try to make use of it. The voice of Colonel Tunk filled the cockpit. ”This is Chariot Leader. Battle orders. Our task is to maintain a perimeter around the wormhole until the enemy has been engaged. Then we’ll withdraw out of the system. When you emerge from the other end of the wormhole, you can go back to base, but remain alert and do *not* dock until you get permission. This operation should not prove too demanding for our squadron, but watch and learn as much as you can. Good luck. Chariot Leader out.” The ships of Chariot squadron formed a mobile, protective barrier around the wormhole, each ship circling around it in an elaborate pattern and at high velocity. Better to have some momentum if they should come under attack unexpectedly. Elsewhere in the system, other INRA squadrons took their positions and went through pre-battle checklists. There were several hundred ships of all sizes, even one of the elusive and rare Cruisers, the large and mysterious craft that looked like an ordinary Federal capital ship but had been radically rebuilt on the inside. On the scanner, the disk of alien ships approached quickly, and now they could be seen without visual enhancement, far away in the distance. It was a strange sight; the enemy ships were clearly visible, but not on account of their shape or colour or motion. Rather, they could be seen because their dark hulls obscured the stars behind them, forming a black, starless line in space. The strictly octagonal disk was heading for the INRA ambush edge-on. Ranie peered intently at the scanner. Was the disk dissolving? Before his eyes, the red splotches that could barely be distinguished as being individual ships and not one enormous one were quickly and fluidly morphing into another shape. It took him a few seconds to make out what it was. It was a half-sphere, geometrically correct and with the hollow end pointing forwards, right at the INRA positions, as if the aliens wanted to capture their enemy inside a giant bowl. No, Ranie immediately corrected himself, it was far beyond anything that could rightfully be described as giant; it consisted of tens of thousands of Thargoid ships and could not be called anything less than a gargantuan and chilling display of precision, cold calculation and determination. Ranie had his trance-like fascination cut short by the sudden appearance of Prince Hildgarn on the holoscreen. ”Attention all ships. Orders. We have clearly been spotted by the enemy. Supporting ships to leave the system, but stay alert and be prepared to return here on short notice. First line ships: Commence first attack. Battle formation forty-two. Good luck. Hildgarn out.” Several groups of INRA ships began moving towards the alien formation in one of the pre-planned patterns. For a neutral observer it might look like they were embarking on a suicide mission, for the INRA ships were almost grotesquely outnumbered. That was also the way it looked to Ranie, and he felt shamefully relieved to be able to turn his tail, leave the battlefield behind and dive through the merciful, white mist of the wormhole. Sol. Far out from the orbits of any planet, deep inside the Oort cloud where the wormhole had deposited the little Viper. Ranie had never been in the Oort cloud of any system before, and this didn’t look much like any kind of cloud to him. Empty space all around. Still, on the navigational display he could clearly see that the density of asteroids was a bit higher here than it was further in-system, inside the orbit of Pluto. From here, the yellow star Sol was only a pinprick of light, to his eyes indistinguishable from the backdrop of other stars that surrounded it. Once in a while, he knew, one of the small asteroids here would for one reason or another start to fall towards the sun and accelerate for thousands of years before reaching the inner planets and curving around the star. Sometimes nobody would notice its passing by, and sometimes it would turn into one of the most majestic and awe-inducing sights any planet-dweller could ever hope to see: a comet. The scanner showed a few very minor asteroids and rocks nearby, and he absentmindedly wondered if one of those might one day fly by the Earth, veiled in gas and dragging a long, white, ghostly tail. If that happened, who would be there to see it? Humans or Thargoids? Or nobody at all? As he zoomed out on the scanner, preparing to jump back to base, his attention was caught by a small object that was moving in a strange way. It was headed directly away from the sun at semi-high speed, about half an AU away. He couldn’t detect any other asteroid behaving like that, and quickly did a visual enhancement of the image. As the object filled the holoscreen, he felt a needle of ice go up his spine. That was no asteroid: that was a probe. A small probe, irregular in shape, moving fast in outer Sol. A typical spy-probe, judging from its appearance. Who would have any interest in spying on Sol? Well, the Empire would of course be very interested to keep an eye on the goings-on in the Federation’s capital. But they didn’t have the tech to spy from this distance, nor did anyone else. Only INRA had that kind of hardware And the Thargoids. It had to be a Thargoid spy probe. It probably wasn’t the only one. The aliens, if so inclined, could easily fill up the Oort cloud with an entire armada of tiny probes, systematically collecting intelligence about mankind and its defences. Perhaps even about INRA. Because, he realised, another ice needle shooting up, it didn’t just have to be in Sol. Every star system with human presence could be positively crawling with enemy probes, camouflaged deep inside the various Oort clouds. INRA’s counterintelligence must have failed, Ranie decided. The probes must somehow have gone undetected, perhaps for centuries. He would have to take a closer look at this one. Hmm. A big parabolic dish, a few modules, a long, cantilevered steel boom with a suite of tiny equipment at the end. About two meters each side, except the dish, which had a diameter of about twice that. For a probe, Ranie thought, those were enormous measurements. It would have to be immensely powerful. From the three-dimensional image he couldn’t detect any of the telltale Thargoid octagonal shapes, but that didn’t have to mean anything. It was decision-making time. Blow it up or take it in? No question. It had to be studied by INRA scientists, and there was plenty of room in the cargo bay. He flew over to the probe and matched its speed, then used the tractor beam to pull it in and secure it inside the cargo bay. The sensors performed a thorough scan of the probe, not detecting any explosives, gases or mechanisms that would pose a threat, except a trace amount of a radioactive material that was too well shielded to be at all harmful. In fact, the probe emitted little of anything, and it didn’t seem to be drawing any power at all. It looked dead. Of course, that made sense for a spy probe. When it was in a dormant state, totally inactive, it was that much more difficult to detect. Perhaps it flashed into action with certain intervals, gathering a lot of data quickly and then shutting down. Or perhaps the Thargoids had invented sensors that worked without power input. Anything was possible. Ranie could not resist the temptation to take a closer look at it, so he left the pilot’s seat and made his way to the cargo bay after having put on his encounter suit, just to be on the safe side. He had turned the sensors on board to their maximum sensitivity, so if anything happened inside the cargo bay, anything about that alien craft changing just the slightest bit, he would be warned immediately. Furthermore, he had rigged the controls of the cargo hold to initiate immediate evacuation if the sensors in his suit gathered from his bio-data that his state suddenly changed in any direction. The object would then be violently sucked back out into space by the tractor beam, which would momentarily have its power massively boosted by a surge channelled directly from the hyperdrive. At the same time, Ranie himself would be dragged, via his suit, out of the cargo hold and behind the heavy shielding of the cockpit area, all within one tenth of a second. It would completely ruin the tractor beam device, of course, but that was expendable; he’d had unknown objects inside his cargo bay before, and it made him feel uncannily tense and vulnerable. He was not going to take any chances. He carefully approached the probe where it lay securely fastened to the deck, looking a lot bigger inside his relatively small ship than out in empty space. As he had seen on the holoscreen before loading the probe into his ship, the design was dominated by a large, white dish, perfect for long-range espionage. Via a metal skeleton, it was securely mounted on a polygonal housing, which was clad in a thick, protective fabric of some sort. Unusually large instruments as well as long, thin antennas and bulky sensors were sticking out of the skeleton at bizarre angles, emphasizing the no-nonsense nature of the whole contraption. The long boom was coated in a thin layer of interstellar dust, which he could easily wipe away with his gloved hand. The metal rods were so slender as to be almost delicate, and the boom gave a slight creaking sound as he gave it a light punch, making it shudder. He gently and thoughtfully stroked the thin edge of the dish, along the metal skeleton and the decagonal, and not octagonal, housing on which most of the equipment seemed to be mounted. If he were to be completely honest, Ranie thought, he had to admit that it didn’t look much like a typical Thargoid design at all. It was far too flimsy and lacked the hewn-from-the-solid look that characterized all the alien ships he had seen. It could be an early design, of course. He stood on the deck for a while, thinking hard and peering at the probe. On a hunch, he went back to the cockpit and sat down, then called up the Information Inducer device embedded in the headrest of the seat. He had the ship upload the sensor data pertaining to the probe to a central INRA information bank, then relaxed as all the relevant data in that bank was automatically transferred to his brain without him having to lift a finger. It was one of the INRA inventions that had impressed him the most when he first saw it, and it was a result of the amazing progress that had been achieved in the area of brain research. The functioning of the brain was now fully understood by INRA scientists, which was in no small part due to the unlimited influx of funds they enjoyed. The Information Inducer was, he knew, a result of combining this understanding with the ground-breaking insights into the nature of elementary particles that had been gained at roughly the same time. The Inducer, basically an enormously powerful computer, broke information down to a three-dimensional map of how the synapses in any individual brain would look with the same information present. Using this as a sort of blueprint, it then applied physical principles and methods to induce the infinitely small currents in the appropriate synaptic locations in the brain tissue, at the same time stimulating the immediate growth of any required new neurons. The final result was that large chunks of data would instantaneously appear in a person’s mind without the need for any sensory input, or indeed without the Inducer making any physical contact. This made for extremely efficient exchange of information and communication, and it was considered one of INRA’s primary assets. Potentially, it would also serve as a pivotal new weapon in the war against the Thargoids, especially after a more compact version, small enough to be surgically installed in the skull bones of INRA operatives, could been developed. In spite of the breathtakingly advanced processes involved, Ranie found the experience itself completely without drama. It was just like suddenly remembering something very familiar that had temporarily slipped his mind, which was always a pleasant and satisfying feeling. The only drawback to this method, he had been told, was that the knowledge gained in this way tended to be easier forgotten than information acquired by traditional methods. But that problem would be solved with time. He let his thoughts wander to the probe in the cargo bay, and now he knew what it was. It wasn’t Thargoid at all. It was human. It was a human-built probe, launched many centuries ago, long before science had made interstellar travel commonplace, a time when mankind was confined to its planet of origin, the Earth. Ranie couldn’t even imagine what that must be like, knowing for a fact that you could not leave the planet, that your entire life would be spent on one big ball of rock and that the stars in the heavens were completely out of reach. The probe, he further knew, had in its time made an invaluable contribution to mankind’s early knowledge about the Sol system as it zoomed past the planets at what must way back then have been considered an enormously high speed. All the while, and for several decades, it was slowly transmitting data back to Earth with its large and cumbersome antenna. It had explored the four gas giants in the system, and then, its mission accomplished, merely continued along its trajectory, for all intents and purposes just being hurled off into empty space. Ranie marvelled at the patience of its creators. It had taken a long time for the probe to complete its mission, passing by Neptune twelve years after its launch from Earth, and it hadn’t yet, over a millennium and a half later, even left the solar system! That, he thought, was saying something about the state of mankind at that time. They knew they couldn’t go into space themselves, so they did the next best thing and sent a robot. How they must have wished to some day follow in its path! And how frustrating it must have been to know that it would not be possible in their lifetime. But even knowing that, they did what they could. Their optimism and imagination must have known no limits. The probe had been fitted with a message, Ranie was surprised to find himself knowing. The creators of the probe had, ever optimistic, hoped that it would some day be found by aliens who would decipher the message and understand its meaning. The message was in its entirety inscribed on the surface of a golden disk that was attached to the probe, in a code that could be read by a device which was also provided. Ranie felt a strange desire to see the message as it appeared on the disk. He didn’t have to pry the disk off, as the sensors inside the cargo bay could easily read it where it was and decode the message. There were pictures, rather grainy, of people and daily life on Earth at the time of the launch, there were sounds, spoken messages and even short pieces of music. The messages were in different languages, Ranie knew, and he also heard that it was so, although he didn’t understand the words, spoken as they were in languages that had long since died or evolved to modern-day languages. They were short and spoke of peace and friendship, some wishing prosperity unto its listeners. As he listened to the voices of the now long dead inhabitants of Earth, it was as if he was transported down through the centuries, to the point where he could almost feel their presence. One message, spoken in a desert language by a woman, said ”Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday.” Careful what you wish for, Ranie thought. You never know what might come true. Careful, for the first really sentient and technologically advanced race that had been encountered was the Thargoids, the alien menace. Not exactly ’friends in the stars’. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Another message sounded ”Greetings to you, whoever you are; we have good will towards you and bring peace across space.” Well, not anymore, he thought with a slight impatient sigh; that good will had been crushed early on, and what INRA would hopefully bring across space was death and complete destruction. By any means necessary. Ranie tired of the innocent wishes of peace and decided to check out the music. He put it on cockpit speaker and listened for a while, finding the now ancient music largely bizarre and outlandish. It was mostly traditional folk music, he knew, apart from some famous works. Most of the music was not dissonant to his ears, indicating that the basic tones of which the pieces were constructed were the same back then as today. No revolution there. He quickly jumped from piece to piece, finding some of the tunes a little unpleasant and almost as strange as those unknown aliens it was intended for probably would. He was about to shut the speakers off when something made him hesitate. A piece of music had started playing which was unlike any of the others. The individual instruments and the sounds they produced were unfamiliar to him, but the harmonies they created together were of a sort that went right into his brain, as if they had always belonged there. He frowned and let the sensors start playing it again from the beginning, listening in intense concentration. The soft tones filled his head, and evoked feelings of calmness and, strangely, joy. What was this? It sounded so right, like pieces fitting perfectly into a puzzle. The notes were bright and airy, yet with a solid core. It was as if someone had taken a chunk of pure happiness and magically transformed it into a tune. The bright notes seemed to reach for the heavens, doing somersaults under a blue sky, like those birds Ranie had seen when he was growing up on Earth, so long ago. Happiness, yes, but not a childish, exploding happiness that knew no evil; rather, a mature and calm happiness that arose from having experienced the opposite emotion but knowing, with all the certainty in the world, that all will be well in the end. Optimism, Ranie thought. That was it. Happy, rock-solid optimism. And, he reflected, wasn’t that the very reason why this probe was launched in the first place? Not only did its creators think it would perform its mission in the solar system without a glitch, but also that it would eventually be found by aliens who would appreciate the music of mankind. And would bring peace and prosperity. Optimism indeed. The piece ended and Ranie found that an hour had nearly passed, meaning he should expect new orders soon. He looked forward to showing this ancient artefact to his colleagues, who would no doubt be just as fascinated as he was at the archaic technology. Maybe they could use it as a kind of mascot, celebrating the early space-faring times of their species, and it might be given a special display at one of the flagships. And that music could surely be woven into something more modern. An inspirational piece, perhaps. INRA was fond of the arts, because it reminded the operatives of who and what they were and why they were fighting. A slight relativistic crackle of a coded transmission being punched forcefully through hyperspace announced a message from Colonel Tunk. She sounded agitated. ”This is Chariot Leader. The operation is not going as planned. We are required at the battlefield. Jump back and await instructions. Chariot Leader out.” It was a terrible sight. In the background, a massive, black wall of gargantuan Thargoid motherships, moving ever closer to the retreating INRA forces. In the foreground, several irregular spheres of smaller Thargons, each consisting of more than forty ships. Within each sphere there were at least two major INRA warships, so densely and definitely surrounded that they could not be seen, completely trapped and under heavy fire. They seemed to be overwhelmed beyond rescue. On the scanner, Ranie saw thirty-six Wyverns appearing in real-space, immediately starting work on forcing open no less that twelve new wormholes for the INRA ships to escape through. ”Yikes,” he thought, ”High Command must be expecting this battle to come to a pretty sudden end.” Prince Hildgarn appeared on the holoscreen. ”Attention new arrivals. Short update: we’ve lost at least fifty ships to enemy fire, including the heavy cruiser Raoul Wallenberg and five Anacondas. The enemy surprised us with a swift maneuver and was able to capture a large part of our task force. We’ll try one more thing before we have to retreat, but we must be very quick about it. Group One will open general fire against the enemy to discourage the motherships from entering the battle, and Group Two will concentrate their fire on this point." A Thargon in the closest sphere took on a red tinge as it was marked out by the command ship. ”The enclosed ships will concentrate their fire on the same point from the inside and try to escape when the targeted Thargon either retreats or is destroyed. We believe the latter will happen. Execute.” Ranie was in Group Two and immediately fired his nose cannon against the designated target. Thirty other ships followed suit and the alien ship was suddenly awash in intense, piercing energy. The otherwise dark hull took on a ghostly aura of sickly white as the shields deflected and absorbed the fire it was taking. The tactic made sense, Ranie thought, because the aliens, with their pronounced hive mentality and extraordinary sense of symmetry, could conceivably be confused by a strictly asymmetrical attack concentrating on one point in their phalanx. And so it seemed, because the Thargoids took no action to neutralize the tactic and the Thargon sucked up massive amounts of aggressive energy, to the point where Ranie’s sensor showed the tormented hull radiating more energy out into space than what was coming in; a sure sign of a vessel about to explode violently. A second later, it did just that, and an INRA Constrictor shot out of the opening thus made. It was closely followed by a heavily modified Skeet which was only barely able to get through the opening in the sphere of alien ships that was already closing. The besieged ships now free, Group One immediately started firing on the Thargons that had made up the sphere to prevent them from coming on the offensive again, while Group Two went to work on the second sphere. The success was repeated, and two more Constrictors were liberated. The third sphere of alien ships with INRA vessels claustrophobically captured in its center was much bigger than the first two. It was one of the first such spheres that had been formed, surprising the INRA commanders, and it pinned down five Couriers and a huge Griffin. The same tactic as with the two previous spheres was initiated, and thirty-five beams converged on the target. Through the corner of his eye, Ranie noticed that Group One was beginning to have some trouble in pinning down the Thargons that had been part of the now dissolved spheres, and ship-to-ship fights were breaking out, with INRA clearly being pushed back. Suddenly, a white flash erupted from behind the massive wall of Thargons. One of the Couriers had been destroyed, and the battle display in Ranie’s Viper showed that more of the surrounded ships would follow very soon. Four new flashes in quick succession proved it to be correct. Only the Griffin now remained pinned down by Thargons, and its shields, although of the best INRA standard, were down to half their strength. The situation was desperate. To make matters worse, the tactic that had worked so well with the two previous spheres was not well suited now. The passage arising from the destruction of just one Thargon would not allow the bulky Griffin to get out, and the remaining Thargons would quickly move closer together, closing it up again. In addition, it seemed that this sphere had more than one layer of alien ships. It became increasingly clear that the Griffin was doomed. Its shields were at one quarter efficiency and deteriorating fast. As a last-ditch attempt of escape, the crew of the powerful warship routed all its power to the drive and accelerated at full force toward the inner shell of its makeshift prison, trying to ram its way out. It got nearly all the way through the outer shell before it was stopped, completely annihilating its own shields, and then a split-second Thargoid beam went right through the hull and came out on the other side. It could not have hit the drive, because the Griffin didn’t explode right away. Ranie winced as the huge ship, now veering out of control, was again swallowed by the mass of smaller Thargons that had killed it. It sank helplessly back into the black alien mass as if it were an animal trapped in a myriad of small, black ants. Some crewmember must have had the coolness of head to initiate the self-destruct process, because just as the Griffin disappeared from sight behind the alien ships, there came a yellow flash of standard explosives that destroyed the ship. No-one wanted to be taken prisoner by the Thargoids. There were no more survivors and the battle was over. Prince Hildgarn ordered immediate retreat, and Group One covered the escape of the ships in Group Two, which were already accelerating hard toward the closest wormhole. Ranie also fled at full speed into the wormhole closest to his position, hurling through the space-time tunnel with the sour taste of defeat in his mouth. On his retina lingered the image of the thirty remaining ships of the desperately fighting Group One that had covered his retreat, now badly outgunned and beginning to be surrounded by masses of alien ships. As Ranie emerged from the unstable and migratory end of the wormhole that swooshed wildly through the universe at the speed of light, he found himself in empty space, two light years from an unsettled system. While he was checking the ship for damage after the battle, the image of an obviously shocked and pale Prince Hildgarn appeared on the holoscreen. ”Your attention, please. Right, that went better than we deserved. It was supposed to be an initial, cautious skirmish but it developed into a full-fledged battle. They are obviously far more aggressive than we thought. As you know, we had *not* considered the possibility of taking casualties this early, much less losing several ships. At the final count, we destroyed five enemy ships. We lost sixty-seven of our own. Their crews fought bravely and shall be honored.” The officer made a tactful pause. ”On the positive side, when the analysis is over we will have learned a lot about the enemy, perhaps even uncovered a blind spot in their way of thinking. This analysis has already started, and the performance reports will be ready in an hour.” There was another pause, as if the shaken Prince had trouble thinking of anything meaningful to say to his badly defeated troops. He apparently decided to make it short. ”In conclusion, just so there’s no doubt in your mind: the Second Thargoid War is now well under way. Hildgarn out.” The check for damage came up empty, meaning Ranie could safely jump on. All other ships that had been involved in the battle would go through the same motions and hyperjump directly back to base, but not Ranie. He had a little mission of his own to conclude. Sol. The Oort cloud, a few tens of thousand kilometers out from where he had been the last time he visited these parts, just a couple of hours ago. He saw on the navigational display that he had arrived at precisely the right place. He let go of the controls and let the ship itself perform the delicate maneuvers he had programmed it to. No pilot was capable of controlling the ship with the precision required, and he wanted this to be just right. He let the sensor array once more play that remarkable piece of music he had found on the golden record, and soon the cockpit reverberated with the perfect, happy harmonies as he leaned back in the seat. While he relaxed as well as he could in his current state of mind, the autopilot positioned the Viper in space with pin-point accuracy. Then the cargo bay doors opened and the tractor beam pulled something out into space. For a short moment, the old probe drifted silently directly in front of the viewscreen, allowing Ranie a last look at its archaic technology. The parabolic dish glinted a brilliant white in the starlight. Then the tractor beam gave it a carefully calculated nudge in the right direction, out of the system. It was now on its original course with the exact same speed it had had when he first intercepted it, with the same gentle acceleration, to within one thousandth of an angstrom per second squared. It would continue on its lonely voyage, bravely diving into the future and the darkness. Just as its creators had designed it. Just as if nothing had happened. Ranie sat immobile for a minute while the music played, seeing the tiny craft safely on its way. He had made a small modification to it, having the sophisticated matter-manipulation equipment in his ship add his own piece to the many old messages on the record. Just his own voice with a friendly greeting to whoever found it. Is wasn’t really important, but he felt entitled. It wouldn’t reach any star system for many millennia, but when it did, perhaps the universe had changed and those who found it would prove worthy of its message and the naïve trust of which it spoke. He didn’t know, of course, exactly like those who had designed and launched this little chunk of pure hope and optimism so many, many years ago. He just didn’t know. And it felt good. The music ended. He turned the Viper sharply around and gunned the drive, preparing to jump back to base. He had a war to fight. paolo.mariani@spray.no  |
paolo.mariani@spray.no