Star Rain Read online

  Gina could tell this wasn’t a bad news meeting as she and Benny sat down. The mood in the air was light.

  “Go ahead,” Chairman West,” Angie said.

  West’s smile got larger, if that was possible.

  “We have recently completed final testing on creating large empty-space bubbles and keeping them stable.”

  “How large?” Gage asked a moment before Gina could.

  “Stability can be maintained at just under two hundred light year diameter,” West said.

  Gina and Benny both sat back with that. They had been hoping twenty years before, when Benny came up with the idea, of managing just twenty or thirty light year diameter, and a hundred seemed like dreaming.

  “Wonderful!” Ray said, smiling.

  Gina was shocked that even Tacita was smiling at the news. Gina couldn’t remember the last time Tacita had smiled. It looked almost wrong, actually.

  “We also have figured out a way,” West said, “to create an empty-space bubble that will be in motion. Only sub-light speed, but still in motion.”

  All of them congratulated West, then Benny asked, “So is the testing done? Can we try this on the battlefield?”

  West smiled. “That’s the next step.”

  “What is needed?” Gage asked.

  “To create a stable bubble of two hundred light years in diameter,” West said, “we need to explode enough of the empty-space bubbles within a reasonable distance of the new bubble at the same time. Too many and the new bubble is too big.”

  “How many smaller bubbles would that be, approximately?” Gina asked.

  “A couple thousand,” West said. “Easily done with the Shark ships.”

  Gina nodded. West was right. It would be an easy operation to coordinate.

  “So when do you want to build this first one?” Benny asked.

  Everyone waited for West to answer.

  Gina expected the answer to be in six months or a year. After twenty years of West working on this, that seemed like a logical time frame to her.

  “Tomorrow,” West said. “That would be perfect.”

  All Gina could do was just stare at Chairman West’s smiling face.

  Beside her Benny just laughed with the other chairmen.

  Good news was a very, very strange thing to get at times.

  THIRTY-ONE

  FOR THE FIRST test, they had decided on a corridor of alien ships that were pouring from one smaller galaxy and heading toward another larger one.

  Most of the alien ships had not reached the new galaxy, but there were millions of alien ships on the way. And all seemed to be moving along a fairly narrow path.

  The chairmen had decided that they were going to try to defend that galaxy and so far were succeeding against the early alien ships. But they had little hope of stopping over a million ships per day.

  But an empty-space bubble would certainly help a lot.

  Benny couldn’t believe his crazy idea might actually work. He had basically given up on it after twenty years. And over the last three years his focus had been on the upcoming mission.

  So this news felt almost surreal and he was in a complete wait-and-see mode.

  Actually, everyone but Chairman West was. And after scanning through West’s last few experiments that had been successful, Benny could see why West was excited and positive.

  How they had solved the problem of constructing empty-space bubbles was to discover what drew an empty-space bubble to a certain location. They had copied that and then, when a bubble was deflated somewhere nearby, the replacement bubble formed where they had wanted it to form.

  Benny and Gina had been standing in front of their command chair, watching the movement of the ships on the big screen of the area around the proposed empty-space bubble.

  “Rescue One in position,” Star Rain said.

  Benny and Gina had decided to keep Star Rain back away from the test area. But Rescue One was close, a little closer than Benny would have liked, actually. But he had decided he wasn’t going to second-guess West in any fashion.

  “Anchor functioning,” West said. “All systems green.”

  The Anchor was the device that would draw the empty space to it when one was deflated nearby. The Anchor was positioned directly in the center of the path of the mass of ships pouring from the nearby galaxy.

  Gina turned to their command crew. “Stay alert on this one. I want data from every possible source.”

  Then she and Benny sat down in their command chair and Benny said to Star Rain, “Be prepared to move us to safety if anything threatens this area.”

  “Understood,” Star Rain said.

  Gina squeezed his hand.

  “Chairmen, we are ready,” West said.

  Benny knew that all six of them were watching, as well as Ray and Tacita. But it was up to him and Gina to give the go-ahead, since this experiment was in their area.

  “Do all systems look clear, Star Rain?” Benny asked.

  “All systems are ready,” Star Rain said.

  “It’s a go,” Benny said.

  He still wasn’t believing that after almost twenty years, his crazy idea was being tested.

  “Stand ready,” West said to the thousand Shark ships near empty-space bubbles.

  They waited. Gina squeezed his hand as they watched the image of a thousand Seeder ships in empty space along with almost a thousand white dots indicating existing empty-space bubbles. All other ships and Gray ships had been sent out of the area for the experiment.

  “Anchor working at full capacity,” West said. “Bubble One Experiment is a go.”

  Benny knew at that moment Rescue One would coordinate all the destruction of the other empty-space bubbles. That had to be done basically simultaneously to make it work.

  For a moment it seemed as if the experiment was failing until suddenly the screen showed all of the empty-space bubbles vanishing at the same moment.

  And then, a moment later, a large, large area of the screen showed a perfect sphere, shining white.

  Benny knew he was holding his breath because this was the key moment. Would the huge empty-space bubble stabilize?

  “How large is that?” Gina asked Star Rain.

  Two hundred and seven light years in diameter,” Star Rain said.

  “Too much?” Benny asked.

  “Too early to tell,” Gina said.

  One of the worries was how to measure the amount of empty space in all the other bubbles and how that would fill in volume this one large bubble. Clearly they had missed by a little in that calculation.

  “The new bubble seems to be stable,” Star Rain said. “The next sixty seconds will be important.”

  Nothing was coming from Chairman West yet.

  Benny tried to force himself to breathe normally.

  Rescue One was still in position and Benny could only imagine the intensity they were working on board that ship. This had been a passion for the crew of that ship for twenty years.

  The seconds ticked past and Benny and Gina kept getting more and more data flowing in.

  But neither one of them, or any of the other chairmen wanted to interrupt the work on Rescue One to ask a question.

  Benny found being a spectator difficult at best. But with his hand in Gina’s, they sat there, trying to breathe and focusing on the data.

  Finally, after almost two full minutes, Chairman West said simply to all of them. “The bubble is stable.”

  “Confirmed,” Star Rain said.

  “Unbelievable,” Benny said, standing.

  Gina stood and hugged him harder than he remembered being hugged before.

  Behind them, the entire command crew was cheering.

  After so many years, they all so needed positive news.

  And setting up a vast trap for alien ships was about as positive as it got.

  Benny just couldn’t believe his wild-hair idea had worked.

  And he had a hunch his face was going to be sore from the grin, s
ince grins had been few and far between before now.

  THIRTY-TWO

  OVER THE NEXT five hours, more and more amazing data poured into Star Rain about the first test experiment.

  So much that at times Gina couldn’t seem to keep up.

  The best that could be determined from the wreckage of alien ships in the small empty-space bubbles that were popped, over six thousand alien ships had been destroyed almost instantly. One of the bubbles had had almost two hundred alien ships in it.

  And Chairman West had been correct that by suddenly deflating an empty-space bubble, anything inside was completely destroyed.

  After five hours, she and Benny took a break for a late lunch or early dinner. Gina couldn’t decide what to call it, and then went back to their command chair.

  They managed to get about five hours of sleep that night before a meeting on Star Mist with Chairman West and the others.

  When they arrived, Gina thought it felt just flat wrong. Everyone was smiling, including Tacita.

  They had had so many serious meetings in this room, fun seemed out of place.

  But everyone was laughing and joking.

  Gina found it infectious, mostly because she felt exactly the same way.

  West looked like he hadn’t slept at all and Gina doubted he had, but his mood was jubilant, to say the least.

  So for the first thirty minutes of the meeting, he gave a solid report on the successes and a few minor problems they had discovered that could be fixed easily.

  “And no repercussions when we pop an empty-space bubble this size?” Angie asked.

  West shook his head. “A thousand others will form shortly after, but that would be it. Gravity and time forces will just rebalance. Or we could have another nearby Anchor and it would form another large bubble.”

  “Are we going to test that?” Matt asked.

  “We will, yes,” West said.

  Finally, it was Gage who asked the question both Gina and Benny had talked about last night and both were curious about.

  “How fast can we put these large bubbles out there?” Gage asked.

  “That will be up to all of you,” West said, smiling. “It will totally depend on how many ships you would like to divert to the process.”

  “Are you saying that is the only limiting factor?” Ray asked, leaning forward.

  Gina was surprised by that as well.

  West nodded. “The Anchors can be easily mass-produced and a bubble formed in less than two hours of work. So each bubble needs a coordinating ship and as many Sharks as needed to pop enough smaller empty-space bubbles to make the desired size of the larger empty-space bubble.”

  “It took your ship and about a thousand Sharks yesterday, correct?” Angie asked.

  West nodded.

  Gina had a hunch they were going to be doing a lot of calculating very soon on how to disperse fleets of ships to this task.

  “How close together can these large bubbles be?” Benny asked.

  “Safely,” West said, “eight-hundred light years apart. We have not tested that, of course, but the math tells us that is the answer.”

  Gina just glanced at Benny who was shaking his head. She felt the same way. In the distances between galaxies, that was extremely close together.

  “So we could put these up around an alien galaxy, basically,” Gina said, looking back at West. “On all the major paths alien ships take toward another galaxy?”

  West nodded. “Let me show you, if you don’t mind if Star Mist downloads a few images from Rescue One.”

  “Please,” Angie said.

  “Star Mist,” West said, “would you please show the first image I prepared from Rescue One of the path of the alien ships from the origin galaxy to the target where we put the large bubble yesterday?”

  “I would be glad to,” Star Mist said.

  A moment later an image of two galaxies appeared in the air, one near Ray and Tacita and one near Angie and Gage.

  A white sphere floated between them directly in the path of a mass of tiny red dots that were alien ships.

  “This second image is a very rough illustration of how the alien ships leave one galaxy toward another,” West said.

  Gina watched as a cone appeared. At one end it was basically the shape of the origin galaxy and expanding out like a megaphone toward the larger target galaxy.

  Gina was amazed. All alien ships already in transit were inside the cone and the large white empty space was square in the middle of the cone and about halfway between the two galaxies.

  “Here is what would be needed and would be possible to stop most alien ships in that corridor,” West said.

  The image changed to show six large white empty-space bubbles staggered behind the first one and offset in such a way that almost no alien ship could escape hitting one of them.

  “A couple dozen Sharks could clean up the few ships that make it along the seams,” West said, smiling.

  The stunned silence filled the room. Gina could hardly breathe. Was this even possible?

  Ray and Tacita just sat there, eyes wide, staring at the illustration floating in the air.

  Finally Matt asked, “How long did you say it would take to set that all up?”

  “Using the fleet we used yesterday,” West said, “two days at most.”

  Again Gina just sat there beside Benny, stunned. She didn’t even know what to say.

  Two days?

  Just two days?

  Nothing in the world of Seeders took only two days.

  “Star Mist,” Angie asked, breaking the silence, “how many alien ships, approximately, will leave that galaxy along that corridor?”

  “Approximately sixty-four million,” Star Mist said.

  “Let me see if I understand this completely,” Ray said, turning to face West. “You are telling me we can stop sixty-four million alien ships with two days work and a dozen or so Sharks watching for those alien ships that miss the bubbles?”

  “That’s exactly what I am saying,” West said, beaming.

  Silence.

  Then everyone in the room jumped to their feet applauded.

  West looked embarrassed, but kept his grin pasted on his face.

  Gina couldn’t remember feeling this good before, at least not since they had found the alien problem.

  Beside Gina, Benny applauded while he shook his head and then laughed.

  “What are you laughing about?” Gina asked him.

  “It’s going to get real crowded in those rattraps,” he said.

  She liked the sound of that more than she wanted to admit.

  THIRTY-THREE

  BENNY AND GINA stood in front of their command chair, watching the daily reports pour over the large screen in front of them. Around them, the mood in the command center was light and there was occasional laughter.

  In the weeks after the first initial successful construction of a large empty-space bubble, Benny and Gina and the others worked with West to form teams to build new bubbles.

  Or rattraps as Benny liked to think of them.

  Larger military ships that could hold a thousand Sharks were the anchor ships.

  And by the end of three weeks, they had ten fleets of ships placing bubbles.

  Ray and Tacita had managed to get the Grays to join in the guard duty of any alien ship missing a bubble. It seemed the Grays were very impressed at the Seeders’ ability to come up with solutions and were more than willing to help.

  By the end of six months, most of the Seeders’ fleets were involved with building bubbles and the Gray fleets were doing cleanup around the bubbles.

  As a test, West and his team had built a large bubble right in the middle of a large number of alien ships, then waited a few weeks and popped it to make sure the result would be as desired.

  Benny was happy to learn that the result was better than hoped for. Deflating a large bubble smashed whatever was inside into pieces so small, they were hard to even identify. Basically, everything
inside became nothing more than space dust.

  And when the test bubble was deflated, a new large bubble formed close by with another Anchor.

  So now, at the one-year anniversary after the first bubble had been formed, hundreds of thousands more rattraps were formed, with Seeder fleets creating them at the rate of six hundred per day.

  Benny just shook his head when he learned that number. Seeders never did anything at a small scale.

  And tonight, on the one-year anniversary of the first bubble, all the chairmen and command crews from all the major ships in this fight were meeting for a large party to honor Chairman West and his fantastic team. The first real party they had had out here.

  Benny couldn’t believe how much he was looking forward to the party, and Gina had spent days trying on different dresses, she was that excited as well.

  And she had made him promise that he would dance with her no matter how many left feet he claimed to have.

  They had earned a party as far as Benny was concerned. They had done the impossible and won this battle.

  It would still take years to block all main alien ship corridors, but only years. Not decades or centuries.

  And that just made Benny smile. He still wasn’t used to thinking in the vast numbers of years that Seeders thought in. He liked here and now and maybe some thought of tomorrow. So this schedule worked for him.

  He just wasn’t good at thinking about next century.

  But now, officially, this battle was won. Star Rain had estimated at this rate of construction, the entire alien problem would be contained in ten years and the aliens would cease to exist in this area of space in less than two hundred years.

  The larger battle in the other areas would take more time, but now it was possible to stop all the aliens completely.

  And when he asked Star Rain the percentage of chance of this entire battle throughout all space being won, the answer was now one-hundred-percent.

  That was worth a party by anyone’s rights.

  Gina came over and took his hand and smiled at him. “Ready to go get dressed?”

  “I am dressed,” he said, smiling at her.

  “I mean in the tux I got for you,” she said. “I’m dressing up and so are you.”