Darklight Pirates
Chapter Twenty

“They’ve refused to let us dock,” Captain Sullivan said, looking up at Cletus. “The proper codes are necessary to approach closer.”

“Any evidence of weapons?”

“None, sir. Here are the scans.”

Cletus glanced at them, then homed in on the structure orbiting the world. He reached out, his finger leaving an electric blue trail as he touched it.

“What’s this? Could it be a weapons system?”

“It rings the planet. Should I call the Programmer General and--”

“I can handle this,” Cletus said brusquely. He walked around and magnified the ring around the planet. He frowned at the amount of power flooding into the structure. “It looks like a directed energy weapon.”

“Should we stand off, sir? They refused our request to dock again.”

“Connect me.” Cletus squared his shoulders and stared at the vidscreen. A woman’s image popped into focus. She hardly looked old enough to be an approach controller. Cletus cleared his throat and asked in his sternest voice, “Why aren’t we allowed down? The Programmer General is aboard.”

“Know that,” the woman--girl--answered. “You have a nano coating that would destroy our facilities. How do you intend to remove the infection? That icky black stuff.”

“I know what it is. We must dock to allow your crew access to scrape it off.”

“Denied.”

“Let me speak with your supervisor.”

“That’s me. I’m the boss.”

“You have a superior. I’ll discuss it with--”

“No call to get snippy. I can’t reach Doctor Germain right now. He’s in the middle of powering up the One Ring.”

“The weapon circling your world?”

The girl pursued her lips, then smiled crookedly. She shook her head.

“No weapons here. That’s the big project. The One Ring to rule them all. Sort of a joke.”

“This isn’t solving our problem. The Programmer General wants to land.”

“So land already. We can handle a dartabout. Bring it into our secondary dock where we have quarantine facilities, and we’ll scrub off any infection on the hull, then give an upcheck on proceeding.”

“Sir, we need to be sure the swarm is completely removed. Most of the sensors are still blanketed.” Captain Sullivan flashed a quick scan of the Shillelagh’s hull to remind him.

That made Cletus even angrier.

“I am Commander in Chief Armed Forces. Prepare for my dreadnought to dock.”

“Do whatever you like, but the docking clamps aren’t going to open.” The woman shifted view and tapped her finger next to a control on her panel. “No docking clamps, no airlocks. Getting into the city will be mighty hard, unless you intend to blow a hole in the dome.”

“Sir.”

Cletus felt as if he would erupt, but Captain Sullivan’s caution caused him to swallow his anger and reconsider ordering the lasers to burn a way down.

“This is our colony. Burran runs it. They should take orders from us, not the other way around.”

“Which hill do you wish to die on?”

Cletus spun. He had not heard Leanne come onto the bridge. She looked from the vidscreen to him.

“This one. My orders will be obeyed.”

“What the approach controller suggests is logical. The Shillelagh requires repair, beginning with removal of the weaponized nano swarm on the hull.”

“They’re afraid we will contaminate them, sir. I would be.” Sullivan began blanking layer after layer on her HUD until only the primary controls remained.

“Find how they will decontaminate the ship.” Leanne spoke quietly. Cletus started to rail against this, then felt her hand on his arm. He jerked free, but the touch was enough to break his obstinance.

“How will you tend to our hull prior to docking?”

The girl smiled. He wanted to switch off the link, order the Shillelagh docked and let the maggots take them.

“Like we do everything on Scrutiny. We do it right. You intending to come down on a dartabout?”

“I am.”

“Then be welcome, but leave your attitude aboard.”

Cletus bellowed but his ire reached only those on the bridge. The woman had cut the comlink.

“They are already moving to remove the swarm, sir. The dartabout is prepared.”

“I’ll let your father know.” Leanne reached out again, then pulled back before touching his arm. She pivoted and left the bridge quickly. Somehow she retained her composure in spite of her obvious desire to be away from him.

Cletus glowered as he watched the small vessels from Scrutiny begin working from the stern forward to vaporize the nano swarm. As if by magic the blackness vanished, leaving behind the shiny aluminum-lithium alloy skin, glittering in the light filtering around the planet from the massive red giant primary.

He ran a quick sensor probe on the One Ring. Its power consumption had increased, but nothing showed that it threatened the Shillelagh. He muttered, almost under his breath, “You have the conn, Captain Sullivan,” then marched directly to the bay where the dartabout powered up for the descent to Scrutiny.

#

“This is all the reception we get?” Cletus scowled. Two men dressed in work suits came to them from across the broad concrete floor.

Dozens of robots clanked and hissed, sizzled and welded the craft hangared here. Nowhere did he see more than a few people gathered and speaking in guarded tones. These mostly worked together on HUD panels controlling the robotic workers.

“The population is low. Most everything is done using robots,” Donal said.

“But you’re the Programmer General!”

“And you’re the Commander in Chief Armed Forces,” Leanne said in a voice so low he almost didn’t hear.

He jerked around and stared at her. The tone was mocking.

“I deserve respect. So does my father. These people are only colonists. They are Burran citizens and--”

“And nothing. Be quiet.” Donal’s rebuke caused Cletus to stiffen. Before he could say any more, his father went to meet the two with outstretched hand and hearty greeting.

“Learn more before you act,” Leanne warned.

“It’s not your place to tell me how to act.”

“I advise, nothing more. Hold your anger in check. They do not mean to intentionally insult you. They live on a frontier world where society is much different from yours--or mine.”

He saw that she tried to calm him. It only caused him to get angrier.

“Cletus, come meet our hosts. This is Micah Ralston. With him is Scrutiny’s scientific direction, Doctor Judson Germain.”

Cletus shook hands, trying to evaluate the two men his father so obviously admired. Ralston had the look of a bureaucrat, but Germain held the reins of power. His bright, sharp blue eyes fixed on Cletus, impaling him with his own appraisal. Gray hair cropped close to his skull might once have been brown. Bushy eyebrows wiggled as he spoke. Cletus got the sense that what Germain said mattered less than how he reacted. He tried to appear interested, but the words came to him as platitudes and nothing more.

“What is your field, Doctor? I assume the title is academic and not medical.”

“That’s so, Cletus.”

Cletus bristled at the informality, then remembered what Leanne had said. Life on a colony world held less pomp than a developed planet like Ballymore.

“Does your research have something to do with the device circling the world?”

“The One Ring? Of course it does.” Germain glanced at Donal for permission to say more. This settled Cletus a little. The colonist knew who commanded. “I’m an astrophysicist.”

“Studying the neutron star lodged in the middle of the red giant?”

“I see your father has revealed the reason Scrutiny was settled. Yes, that. The One Ring is a synchrotron designed to pump a near-light velocity stream of particles into the Pot o’ Gold.”

“The neutron star?”

“Some call it the Leprechaun but that never struck, I prefer to call it the pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow--the particles we direct are an effort to learn more of the dynamics of the system. Some day the gold will be ours.”

“What have you found?” Donal took Germain’s elbow and steered him back toward the door where he and Ralston had entered. The rising construction din inside the hangar grew oppressive, making speech almost impossible.

Cletus trailed the others, making one last look behind at the Shillelagh’s dartabout. Robots worked to repair minor dings. A larger machine slowly scanned from stem to stern, possibly checking for the nano swarm that had shrouded the Shillelagh. He wanted a readout to see what the surveillance revealed, but the risk of being left behind outweighed his curiosity. He rushed after Leanne, who ducked through a closing door in front of him. He grabbed, caught the handle and pulled it open to slip through himself. His father and the two colonists had already seated themselves at a conference table festooned with small virtual displays showing various aspects of the repair work conducted in the hangar.

Germain pointed out several of the holograms and built graphs to better explain what they did.

Leanne stood silently to one side. Cletus looked for the best seat at the table but couldn’t decide whether to sit at his father’s right hand or remain standing behind him. In spite of seeming to be an inferior position where a subordinate would be stationed, he stood behind Donal.

“Cletus, you wanted more information about the TZO. Judson has a streaming video of the red giant.”

In spite of himself, Cletus crowded closer and stared into the stellar furnace.

“The dark spots? Sunspots?”

“Created by intermittent blasts from the One Ring,” get said. “This time we are firing Higgs bosons directly into the center of the Pot--the neutron star. We want to see if we can alter the mass of the inner star and how it affects the red giant.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? If the neutron star is disrupted, won’t the red giant send out a coronal mass ejection that might destroy Scrutiny?”

“Our calculations show that it won’t.” Germain shrugged and smiled. “Without a little risk, how can we advance our knowledge of not only neutron stars but red giants and TZOs?”

“You’d risk the entire planet full of colonists?”

“We are increasing the emanations from the Pot. The special, should I say unique?, radiation gives us technological breakthroughs impossible to develop anywhere else.”

“What breakthroughs?” Leanne spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper.

Germain looked at Donal, who nodded.

“We have revolutionized energy storage.” Germain motioned, and Ralston took a small cube four centimeters on a side from his pocket. He dropped it on the table. “That battery contains enough stored energy to power a dartabout.”

“For how long?” Cletus scoffed. The engines aboard even a small spacecraft required a fusion engine. Given standard use, the fuel pellet lasted about five hundred hours.

“Longer than that,” Ralston said. He tapped the cube with his thumbnail. It gave off a solid sound, nothing hollow inside.

“Longer than what?” Cletus felt his ire rising again. Nothing about Scrutiny pleased him. Most of all, his father had kept the entire planet’s very existence from him.

“Than whatever you were thinking. Most think of an ordinary fusion plant. This will keep the dartabout running for five thousand hours.”

“It is only a battery?” Leanne moved closer and stared at it, as if her gaze bored like an ix-ray into the guts.

“That’s like saying a supernova is only an energetic star. We can outfit your dreadnought and reduce the drive equipment by a thousand kilos in the engine compartment alone. Replacing the fusion generators on the laser turrets will give another five hundred kilos of mass saving.”

“But the cannon won’t be as efficient,” protested Cletus. “Not from a battery.”

“Longer duration firing, higher energy density. We’ve shown this.”

“How can you do that? The energy? How?” Cletus clamped his mouth shut when he guessed at the source of the charging energy. “Radiation from the TZO. That’s how you do it.”

“Yes,” Germain said softly, reverently. “The physical storage medium is a major breakthrough because using standard batteries isn’t feasible. And with a standard battery charger, well, it could take years to replenish just one of our super batteries. With the radiation from the Pot supplying the energy, though, well, let’s say it is miraculous.”

“You have not worked out the physics of how this is possible?” Leanne reached for the cube, but Ralston pulled it away before her fingers touched it.

“A great deal of theoretical work has gone into what is a new branch of radiation physics. Much more has to be done. We believe the energy is stored in higher dimensions, but this is only a hypothesis.”

“Doctor Germain has only scratched the surface of this new field. He’s a brilliant man working with the best Burran has to offer, and the exact details are still a mystery.” Donal looked smug at this pronouncement.

“The broad effect is still something of a riddle. We are pioneers in many senses of the word, not only on this strange planet but also the even stranger physics involved in what we replace.”

“Is the One Ring required to agitate the neutron star so it releases this energy?” Leanne stepped back and watched Germain like a snake watches a bird.

“Not at all. Our initial charging stations on the starward side of Scrutiny were installed years before. We use the accelerator to replace out details of the unique stellar configuration, not to excite radiation output which is quite steady and predictable.” Germain pursed his lips, then asked, “Would you like to see the facility?”

“What of the Shillelagh?” Cletus asked. “How far along is its scrubbing?”

Germain moved his hand through one of the holograms, nodded to himself and leaned back.

“Another day or two before we are satisfied that the dreadnought is clean. Then, if the Programmer General wants, we can begin refitting the ship.”

“With the batteries?” Leanne’s voice broke with strain. “How long will this refitting take?”

“A few weeks, no longer. We use mostly robotic crews to free up humans for what we do best: research.”

“Father, it is too dangerous to risk the Shillelagh with unproven technology.”

“The dreadnought’s capability will be increased severalfold,” Leanne argued. “Repairs must be made. It would be remiss not to use this opportunity for improvement.”

“What if the batteries discharge unexpectedly? They’ve never been tested in the heat of battle.” Cletus felt his anger rising as he sensed he had taken the wrong side of the argument.

“If you show Cletus the battery charging station on the far side of Scrutiny, this ought to convince him this is an established technology, not something you just came up with. Can you arrange such a tour, Doctor?”

“Of course, Programmer General. About your ship ...”

“Scrub it and then rebuild it. I want to have a warship powerful enough to take on the remainder of the Burran fleet.”

“From what I’ve heard, that won’t be out of the question,” Ralston said. “The level of tech remains quite primitive, in spite of our repeated requests to upgrade both ships and systems.”

“We should discuss this, Father.” Cletus pulled free when Leanne took his arm and squeezed, warning him to silence. “Our lives not only hang in the balance, but those of everyone in Burran, too.”

“Boldness, Son, this is a time for boldness.”

“Might I see the One Ring?” Leanne moved just enough to insinuate herself between Cletus and Doctor Germain.

“There is little to see. Robots build, repair and run the cyclotron. Balance is crucial, as you might guess, and when powered up, even a small fluctuation disturbs the energy path.”

“You accelerate Higgs bosons?”

Germain laughed and shook his head.

“On rare occasions. There’s not enough power for that to be our primary particle, even in the One Ring. Our usual particles are ions of various metals.”

“But you do use the Higgs?” Leanne pressed.

“Well, yes. We direct a beam of accelerated ions into a resonance chamber. The Higgs are created there and hurled into the Pot. Our instruments on the far side of the planet monitor any change in mass in the neutron star. It has given us great amounts of data and all too few ideas about the actual physical process. I--”

“Judson,” Ralston said gently, “I don’t think they are interested in that.”

“Oh, yes, the battery station, the chargers, the Commander in Chief Armed Forces wants to inspect the facility. Arrange for it, will you, Micah?”

“If you don’t mind, I would discuss certain political matters of an urgent nature, Doctor.” Donal tipped his head slightly, silently shooing Leanne and his son off.

Cletus started to object, then decided he needed to inspect the research station. Not only his life depended on the batteries, but also that of everyone back home. He trailed Ralston from the room, Leanne once more pressed close to his side.