Richard Stryker stared up at the darkening sky. Although the sunlight on Quetzalli had dimmed and the weather had grown cold, the threat was still too far away to be seen. The only evidence the crew of the Sparrow could see was a dark cloud on the very edge of the southern horizon. But by using the nanites Richard could see well beyond his senses. With a single thought he projected himself above the planet and saw it as a whole, as if he was looking at a marble he had found in his pocket. All of Quetzalli could be seen at once, in realtime, thanks to the network of micromachines that the Steward had created.
What he saw was disturbing. The dark cloud was actually an enormous army of bots that was pouring into Quetzalli’s atmosphere. Millions upon millions of small, spherical devices had formed a cloud nearly six miles wide, and more were pouring in every second. Richard could not tell where the invading army was coming from; all the network knew was that they were jumping into the system through hyperspace from some distant location. What was clear was that their mere presence was destabilizing the planet.
Using his connection, Richard tried to find the Steward but he could not be found. The network was still there but the artificial mind that controlled it was gone. Richard called out for the Artilect but he could not find it either. He wasn’t sure if the Artilect was gone or if their star system had been cut off from everyone else. All he could tell was that they were alone and under attack.
“I’m afraid the situation is bad,” Richard said at last. “I can’t contact the Steward or the Artilect. I’m afraid we’re going to have to handle this ourselves.”
“What are we facing?” Laura asked.
Richard opened his mouth to tell his wife what he saw but Jones beat him to it. “Looks like an unending army of invincible machines, six miles wide and getting bigger by the second.”
“Is it really that bad?” Captain Max asked, staring up at the sky.
“Take a look yourself,” Jones said. “We’re all connected to the network. Just reach out with your mind.”
“I’ll never get used to that,” Laura remarked. “It’s so unnatural.”
“Right now that’s all we’ve got, ma’am,” Sergeant Howell said. “Let’s see if we can cut off that army’s supply line. I’d rather battle a finite number of space invaders.”
As the sergeant closed his eyes and concentrated the rest of the group simply stood there, uneasy but not sure what to do. By now their breakfast had been forgotten. All of them had abandoned the table and walked to the end of the courtyard, where they could see the city of New Tikal in the distance. Its tall, crystal spires normally refracted the sunlight into endless patterns of color, but now they had gone dark. It was as if a cloud of despair had settled over the planet. The dog Alex ran up to Laura and stood beside her. He was uneasy but did not say anything.
All at once the planet shook as if it had struck something. The shaking stopped a moment later and Sergeant Howell opened his eyes. “I’ve shut down hyperspace, at least for the moment. That should stop them from pouring in.”
“It’s working!” Richard said excitedly. He could see that no new bots were entering the system. “How did you do it?”
“At the core of this planet is a bank of enormous machines that occupies hundreds of cubic miles of space,” Sergeant Howell said. “They’re supposed to defend the planet in the event of an invasion. I think it’s the Steward’s job to manage them, but since he’s gone they weren’t doing anything. I contacted them and told them to shut hyperspace down. It’s now doing something to destabilize spacetime so that hyperspacial connections can’t be made. I don’t know how long it will last but it seems to be working for the moment.”
Richard turned his attention back to the giant cloud of bots. Even though no new ones were pouring in the cloud was still six miles wide. It was rapidly approaching the surface of the planet.
“Can you order those core machines to defend us?” Richard asked.
The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t know how. You can’t just say ‘Get rid of those invaders’ – it doesn’t work like that. You have to give it commands and I don’t know what commands to give. I think it was designed to be operated by the Steward. Apparently no one realized that the Steward might be the first one to go.”
“So what do we do now?” Richard asked. “Those bots are moving at nearly a thousand miles an hour! They’re going to be here in short order if we don’t do something fast.”
Jones spoke up. “They’re currently forty miles above the planet and sixty miles south of New Tikal. Current speed is 986 miles per hour and accelerating.”
Richard watched as the bots entered the upper atmosphere of Quetzalli. He then had an idea. The entire atmosphere of the planet was laced with tiny nanites; together they formed the network. These nanites were made of programmable matter and could be reconfigured into any material. As the bots entered the atmosphere they became surrounded by these nanites.
Using his mind, Richard created a protective force shield around the group of people in the courtyard. He then contacted some of the nanites that surrounded the invading bots and had them transform themselves into clumps of antimatter.
The effect was instantaneous. From a distance it looked as if a thousand bombs had suddenly gone off in the sky. The whole area became brighter than the brightest day as the entire sky was bathed in a searingly white light. The ground shook, and a moment later the roar of an explosion reached them. When the light finally faded they looked up at the sky. The invading cloud was no longer visible.
“Thanks for that shield,” Captain Max said shakily. “Next time it might be nice to give a little advance warning that the sky’s about to explode. Without that shield the gamma rays from the antimatter reaction would have killed us for sure – and if they hadn’t the shockwave from the blast would have flattened us into pancakes.”
“At least it worked,” Richard said.
“I’m afraid it didn’t,” Jones said softly. “The cloud is still there. Take another look.”
Richard looked back out into space. Using the nanites he took a closer look at where the cloud had been. He soon realized that the Sparrow‘s first mate was right. While the cloud itself was gone the invaders had not been destroyed. It was true that the explosion had torn the bots apart but their parts still remained. As he watched he saw the fragments quickly reform into billions of small, needle-like structures. To his astonishment they glowed white-hot with energy. In the blink of an eye they fell out of space and slammed into the ground, striking the planet’s surface some sixty miles to the south. The ground shook violently.
“You’ve energized them,” Jones said. “Looks like they can absorb gamma radiation.”
“Wonderful,” groaned Richard. “So what do we do now?”
In the distance they saw New Tikal come under assault. While the invading army was too far away to be seen, they could see the affect its attacks were having on the defenseless city. Brilliant bolts of blue and green energy were being fired at the metropolis, striking its buildings. The delicate crystal structures were no match for this bombardment and began shattering. One by one the mighty towers crumbled into dust.
“Don’t just stand there!” Laura screamed. “Do something! Are you just going to wait until they flatten the city and then roll over here?”
“What exactly are those energy discharges?” Captain Max asked. “Those aren’t lasers, are they?”
“Looks like some sort of charged plasma to me,” Jones said.
“Then let’s throw that right back at them,” the captain replied. With his mind he connected to the network and focused on the city. To him the city became a small wireframe model, as if he had loaded a file into a computer and was going to change its properties. Every detail and facet of the remaining structures could be discerned in realtime.
The captain reached out and began altering the city. He dissolved all of the remaining buildings into small blocks and commanded the blocks to change shape. He then browsed through the planet’s library of blueprints, found one for an attack bot, and applied it to all of the blocks. Within seconds the blocks conformed to the pattern he had found, creating an army of millions of spherical bots. As soon as they came online they began blasting white plasma at the countless intruders.
Captain Max then refocused on what was going on around him. In the distance he saw that the entire city of New Tikal was gone. In its place was a giant cloud of activity, illuminated by brilliant beams of energy. They could hear the roar of explosions as bot after bot was blasted into oblivion, their pieces melted into useless metal shards.
“The whole city is gone!” Laura gasped. “What did you do to it?”
“I turned it into an army,” Captain Max explained. “It’s now made of the same sort of machines that are attacking us.”
“Nice going,” Richard said.
“I still advise maintaining this force shield around us,” Sergeant Howell said. “We’re not safe here.”
“And I would advise running for our lives,” Captain Max said. “We need to get out of here while we still can.”
“Get out of here!” Richard exclaimed. “But this is our home! We can’t just abandon this planet.”
“It’s a lot safer than standing here in a war zone!” Captain Maxwell exclaimed. “We’re very exposed here and are just a few miles away from sudden death. If those bots are going to wage war with Quetzalli I’d rather they did it while we were somewhere else. We can always come back later if the planet wins.”
“But leaving may not improve the situation,” Sergeant Howell warned. “Those bots came here from some other star system and there could easily be a lot more of them still out there. If they were able to find us here then they may be able to track us no matter where we go. We don’t know that being in space is any safer. At least here we have the resources of the planet to help us.”
“Or at least, we used to,” Jones said, nodding in the direction of New Tikal. The captain’s army of bots had diminished the number of attackers but the attackers had regrouped. Instead of an army of small machines the survivors had reformed into a giant tank-like structure. The captain’s bots were swarming around the tank, pounding its shields, but now they were having little effect. Meanwhile, the tank was firing enormous bolts of energy that were vaporizing the bots left and right.
Richard reached into the network and focused on the nanites that surrounded the tank. He was surprised to find that the tank’s shield cut it off from the network. He could not access any nanites that were inside the shield, nor could he push nanites through the shield.
“I can’t penetrate the shield,” Richard said. “It’s cut it off.”
“I’m on it,” Captain Max said. The captain refocused on the city and saw that his army of bots had been almost completely wiped out. He frantically used the planetary network to turn large portions of the planet’s crust into programmable matter, which he then turned into scores of bots. But the giant tank blasted the bots into debris as quickly as the captain was able to create them.
Slowly but surely the tank began advancing in their direction. The tank had located the only remaining structure on the planet and had set its sights on destroying it. It was still nearly 40 miles away but at its present speed and course everyone knew it would be on top of them in a matter of minutes.
“I need a new blueprint!” Captain Max shouted. “These bots aren’t working anymore. Does anyone have anything?”
“I’m on it,” Sergeant Howell said. He connected to the network and with his mind quickly browsed through its library of blueprints. He did not find any tank-like structures but he did find the patterns to create several imposing-looking starships. The ships were a slender, rectangular class of vessel, each one roughly fifteen hundred feet long. They had powerful plasma cannons and appeared to be designed for space combat.
The sergeant forwarded the pattern on to the captain, who immediately applied it. The pattern took effect at once. All around them the soil shifted, as it first turned into programmable matter and then formed giant vessels. Every thirty seconds another ship arose out of the dust of the planet, leaving behind enormous chasms in the ground. The ships hovered in the air and trained their cannons on the tank, pounding it with relentless blasts of energized plasma.
The tank stopped advancing and turned its attention on this new threat. The transparent shield around it began to change color as it was relentlessly bombarded. In a few minutes it changed from transparent to red to opaque silver, hiding the tank from view. Then something happened. The tank stopped firing bolts of blue plasma and instead fired a single yellow shaft of light at one of the attacking ships. The beam sliced right through the ship, cutting it as if it had been made out of paper. A titanic explosion engulfed the ship, sending its flaming carcass crashing into the ground. One by one the tank trained its sights on the other attackers.
Richard stared at the doomed ships, aghast. “That is really, really bad.”
“At least we’re slowing it down,” the captain remarked.
“But we cannot stop it,” Jones said. “It will still get here and obliterate us. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Then I think it’s time to go,” Richard said. “Let’s get on the Sparrow and get out of here.”
“What if that tank thing follows us?” Laura asked.
“One problem at a time,” her husband said. He reached out to the network and tried to transport all of them directly onto the Sparrow but found that he could not. Then he remembered that Sergeant Howell had shut down hyperspace. He clenched his fists. He thought about temporarily suspending the sergeant’s command but decided that might make their problem a lot worse. Once the shield was down there was no guarantee they could start it up again.
“Let’s run for it!” he shouted.
“I have a better idea,” Captain Max said. “The Sparrow is twenty miles away on the outskirts of what used to be New Tikal. Let’s just have her come to us. The very last thing we want is to get any closer to that oncoming monstrosity.”
Using the planetary network, the captain contacted the Sparrow and had it engage its cloaking field. Once it was safely hidden the ship hovered just off the ground and raced toward them at a blinding pace. The captain wasn’t sure if its cloak worked or if the tank just didn’t consider the ship to be a threat, but their starship was not hindered and arrived at the courtyard sixty seconds after the captain called for it.
The group frantically boarded the Sparrow as the tank obliterated the last of the defensive starships and resumed advancing toward them. After the captain made sure that everyone was on board, including Alex, he gave the command to leave Quetzalli. Eliza piloted the Sparrow off the planet’s surface and into space while the crew was still making their way toward the bridge. By the time they reached it the ship was already miles off the ground and well on its way toward outer space.
Captain Max settled into the captain’s seat while Jones took his position at one of the consoles. Laura, Sergeant Howell, and Richard stood around, watching.
“Show me the tank,” the captain said.
Jones nodded and brought a picture of the tank up on the forward viewscreen. It had finally reached the Stryker’s home and was firing on it. Within moments there was nothing left of the elegant mansion. When their home had been utterly destroyed the tank dissolved into millions of small, spherical bots. The bots dispersed and began spreading out over the planet’s surface.
“They’re looking for us,” Sergeant Howell said. “They want to know if we survived.”
“It looks like our cloak is working,” Richard said, relieved.
“For now,” Jones said.
The Sparrow soon exited Quetzalli’s atmosphere and headed out into space. “Take us out of here, Jones,” Captain Max said.
“Where to?” Jones asked.
“I don’t care,” the captain replied. “Anywhere but here.”
“I’d advise moving away from any stars that used to be inhabited by man,” Sergeant Howell said. “That is most likely the source of this attack.”
“Agreed,” the captain said.
Jones nodded. A moment later he spoke up. “I’ve plotted a course that will take us toward the heart of the galaxy and I’ve engaged our new stardrive. Our maximum sublight speed is 0.45c. At that rate it will take us about a hundred thousand years to arrive.”
“A hundred thousand years!” the captain exclaimed. “That’s ridiculous! Can’t you just engage the FTL drive?”
“The dampening field is still in effect,” Jones replied. “Its range appears to be quite extensive.”
“It is,” Sergeant Howell affirmed. “We will need to exit the star system before we can make any jumps.”
“I guess that makes sense,” the captain grumbled. “How long will that take?”
“Once the effect of relativity is factored in, it will take approximately 16 hours of ship time to exit this system. That will take us beyond the edge of the shield. Then we can engage the FTL drive and depart.”
The captain nodded. “Well, so be it. We’ll just wait, then.”
As the minutes ticked by they continued to monitor Quetzalli. Over the next thirty minutes the once-green planet turned brown. The vegetation died and the atmosphere was obliterated. The once-vibrant world had been turned into a corpse.
“The bots are thorough,” Richard remarked. “They’re destroying everything and they’re making the planet uninhabitable to boot.”
“Who would create such monsters?” Laura asked.
Jones suddenly spoke up. “We’ve got a problem, captain.”
“Did they spot us?” the captain asked.
“It’s worse than that. Much worse, in fact.”
The captain frowned. “What could possibly be worse?”
Jones pressed a button and the scene on the viewscreen changed. Instead of a planet they saw a picture of a star. This star, however, was not a peaceful place. Giant flares were erupting all over its surface. It was in complete turmoil.
“The star is becoming unstable,” Jones said.
Richard stared at the viewscreen in disbelief. “Unstable? Do you mean it’s about to go nova?”
“It’s worse than that,” Jones replied. “Someone is creating powerful energy fields around the star – that’s why it’s in such turmoil. The star is about to detonate.”
“So it’s going to go nova,” Richard repeated.
Jones shook his head. “Not quite. A nova would be bad, of course – you would have a runaway nuclear reaction and the star would release a whole lot of energy. That wouldn’t really hurt us, though. Our shields can take the energy and the amount of stellar mass that’s ejected is actually quite small. Besides, only white dwarf stars can go nova and this star isn’t a white dwarf. No, this star is about to detonate.”
“I don’t understand,” Richard said. “What does that mean?”
“Someone – or something – is turning that star into weapon. They are attempting to ignite a runaway chain reaction at the heart of the star. When it begins it will convert the interior core of the star into energy. That energy will blast the entire mass of the rest of the star into space, turning it into a wall of white-hot plasma moving at near-lightspeed. When that hits us we will be completely obliterated.”
“That’s impossible!” Richard protested. “Stars just don’t do that.”
“Not naturally,” Sergeant Howell agreed. “I think we are seeing some sort of stellar weapon in action. Someone has found a way to use a star to obliterate all of the planets that orbit it.”
“You mean those bots can do that?” Richard asked.
“Can we discuss that later?” Laura asked. “Don’t we need to get out of here?”
“We can’t,” Jones said. “There is no way to engage the hyperdrive with that shield in place. We’re stuck here.”
“Can we just outrun the blast?” Richard asked.
Jones shook his head. “If my calculations are correct, even at our top speed we can’t get away fast enough. When that star blows we will only have about–”
At that moment the star erupted into a white ball of energy. For a few seconds it became blindingly bright and then it disappeared altogether. The star was no more.
There was silence on the bridge. “How long?” Richard asked.
“About fifteen minutes,” Jones replied.
