Illustration by Kelly Freas

Stealing the Sun

by Ron Collins

Alpha Centauri A was chosen for a few very simple reasons. First, it was close–a mere 4.3 light years from Earth. Second, it was a G2-type star, similar enough to the sun that data taken directly from Sol could be used in software models without requiring complex conversions.

But the most important factor was greed.

Each star in the Centauri system had adequate fusion material to support the new propulsion systems, but Centauri A was the largest of the three, with a mass ten times that of Proxima and twenty percent greater than Centauri B. The supply of resources in A would last that much longer.

And in the end, that was the factor that doomed the star to an accelerated death.

Lieutenant Commander Torrance Black stood on the gunmetal runway that circled Everguard’s pod engineering assembly area. The rail was cold against his grip and seemed to adhere to his palms. Machinery ozone seeped through the open grate of the floor and hung around him like an acrid memory, unchangeable but vaguely distant.

Everything appeared to be on plan.

Each tube bay stood open, the collection forming a perfectly spaced row of a dozen chambers, their three-meter-diameter spans empty, pristinely round, and gleaming with stainless steel beauty.

The wormhole pods that went into these tubes were the size of G-class riders–fifty meters tip-to-tip but rounded in cross-section to fit into the circular tubes. Their surfaces were coated with rugged brown thermal material that made them appear starkly utilitarian in the brightly lit assembly area. Each end was capped with conical black boots of heat-treated alloy, and banded with a titanium-steel ceramic composite fashioned in the zero-g environment of Armstrong station.

His staff wore their fresh whites today. Their voices echoed with professional bearing in the open expanse. A computer reported the status of the automated routine that controlled much of the launch sequence.

"I want these tubes loaded by 1800 hours, folks," he barked at them with what, even he realized, was a little too much vinegar.

"We’ll make it, LC," Malloy replied with a quick salute.

Torrance returned the gesture half-heartedly, then stepped into his glass-enclosed office. He settled into his chair, sighed, and stared through the computer’s holographic image of the wormhole pod’s internal guts.

LC. The title echoed in his mind like silence after an angry scream. Lieutenant Commander.

That was the thing about rank in the military.

Everyone understood what a rank meant. Rank labeled a man, and it stayed with him. It would not be long before the promotion list was made public, not long before everyone knew where Torrance stood.

He would change the world today. As chief launch engineer, he would release a dozen wormhole pods that would burrow into Centauri A. Their external shells would burn rapidly inside the star’s core, and if at least nine of the twelve systems made it to the target point, they would rend space and create the far end of a wormhole. Raw hydrogen and helium would flow to the other side where fellow servicemen would latch these extradimensional warps to the back end of starships.

Then the universe would be open for the first time.

FTL. Faster-than-light travel. Sirius for breakfast, Aldebaran for dinner.

He supposed he should feel something appropriate.

But Kip Levitt, commanding officer of the ship’s Propulsion Center, and a man Torrance had gone to school with so many years ago, had been promoted to full commander today.

Torrance had not.

And it didn’t take a lifer to know that when a man in the chain of command is passed over for promotion, his career, for all effective purposes, is over.

The comm light flashed green on Torrance’s desktop.

"Messages, please," he said.

The image of one of his ensigns filled the desk’s primary view screen. "All tubes loaded, and the power system is charged, sir. Final prognostics are running now."

"Thank you," Torrance replied, "I’ll be there in a minute. We’re on hold until the admiral arrives."

"Aye, sir, I’ll tell Lieutenant Malloy."

The display returned to software circuitry Torrance had been working with prior to the message. He pressed a control pad and accessed data from the propulsion system. Green numbers read three hundred plus terra electron volts. A collider ringed the ship at a radius of fifty-three kilometers. Outside the observation panel, Centauri A’s light made it a gleaming sliver of silver against the black velvet sky.

Torrance grimaced, thinking about the particles inside the ring with something akin to jealousy.

They were lucky, he thought.

Their fate was revealed on a time scale of picoseconds.

Torrance sighed.

Every member of the pod crew, including Torrance himself, filled other jobs during the flight and would be reassigned back to them during the trip home. For example, Lieutenant Karl Malloy, his chief operations officer, was a nav analyst second class, a job that amounted to gathering data for shipboard navigation controllers. When he wasn’t in charge of probes, Torrance was the chief service engineer, responsible for resolving problems with anything from fried communications systems to stopped-up toilets.

Not exactly glamorous.

But then he supposed that could be said about his entire career. He had never been one to seek out the limelight–like Kip Levitt. He hadn’t been a football hero at the Academy or a leading officer candidate. He didn’t grab control in survival school in times of emergency. Instead, Torrance faced difficult times by immersing himself in work, filling his thoughts with code so that his brain didn’t have time to spin out of control over something it could not change. Hell, the entire Everguard mission was just another case of burying his head in the sand.

He rose from his upholstered chair, and stepped around his curved desk to walk into the main assembly area. At the same moment, the entry doors dilated, and Admiral Hatch entered with a full escort of petty officers and assistants,
including Torrance’s CO, Captain Alexandir Romanov.

"Admiral on the floor," Torrance shouted briskly and presented a stiff-backed salute.

"As you were," the admiral replied.

The admiral was an older man with brown hair that showed gray at the razor line of his nonexistent sideburns. His green eyes sparkled, and he walked with an efficient stride that spoke of attention to detail and purpose of mind. "What is our status, Lieutenant Commander?"

"Green for launch, sir."

"That’s good. Your men are a credit to the service, Torrance."

"Thank you, sir," Torrance replied, glancing toward Captain Romanov.

Romanov smiled. "Indeed you are."

The captain’s presence sizzled against Torrance’s mind. Indeed you are. What bullshit. Without doubt it had been Romanov, a rigid, by-the-book-at-all-costs type of man, who allowed the promotion billet to pass Torrance by.

The staff worked in the area below them, checking status displays and ensuring every firing assembly, safety release, and navigation system was operational. They closed the hatches of each tube, leaving behind a dozen anodized black discs evenly spaced along the curved wall like rounds in an old Remington Colt.

Power surged in the launch system. Twelve external launch doors dilated open with the recognizable groan of hydraulic pressure.

"Ten seconds to engage," a recorded voice echoed the red readout that hung on the wall.

Torrance’s spine tingled. He thought about his mother and father, and he wondered how they were. With the time it took message traffic to travel from Earth to Everguard, it was possible they were no longer even alive. He had never really thought of that before.

The digital readout said seven. The power coils whined as they sucked energy from the collider.

The image of Cal McKinley, a high-school friend, came over him. His years at the Academy, his first posting under Captain Jao. Torrance had worked through the ranks, receiving solid commendations at every posting. But at LC there were only so many positions above him.

And Romanov was by-the-book.

The readout read five.

Now Torrance’s entire life was wrapped up in twelve wormhole pods.

Three.

The crew monitored the launch process. Software controllers ran on optical processors.

For the first time in a long while, he thought of Adrienne.

Everguard traveled at nearly six-tenths the speed of light, translating into a twelve-local-year round-trip flight.

Two.

He would be forty-one when the mission was complete. The effects of time dilation would have aged the rest of the world three years beyond that. His investments would likely have doubled twice–not that there was much left after the divorce, but it should be enough to live on for a while.

One.

At least that was something.

"Launch initiated, sir."

Silence echoed where there should have been thunder. The compartment held its breath.

"What’s wrong?" the admiral asked.

"I have no idea, sir," Torrance replied, his heart growing cold. "But the pods are not away."

"We’re not getting anywhere, sir," the technician said.

"And your point would be?" Torrance snapped back.

The air was stale with day-old sweat. The staff was tired and defeated. Their mission-day whites hung from their bodies like whipped flags in dead wind. Displays of the launch system’s microcircuitry and software execution paths flickered against glass boards.

It was 0300 and still they had no answers.

"I’m sorry," he said, rubbing cheeks that were plastic with fatigue. "I’m just like you guys, though–really frustrated, and even a little angry. Romanov wants a personal report at 0600, so I’ll admit I’m anxious to get to the root of this. I apologize for snapping, all right?"

All around, the staff nodded.

"Maybe Romanov would like to take a ride in the tube to check it out personally," Malloy said with a grin, his eyebrow raised in mock anticipation. "We could probably arrange an inspection."

The collection of men and women chuckled, and the room loosened noticeably. Lieutenant Malloy had a knack for saying the right thing at the right time. The image of Romanov as an icon for the upper command structure, drifting out into space from a derelict launch tube, made everyone smile.

Torrance took a deep breath. "Maybe the answer isn’t here."

"What do you mean, LC?"

"We’ve been over everything three times. If the problem were in the on-board systems, I know we’d have found it by now. Maybe it’s something outside."

"Like what?"

Torrance scratched his cheek, fingering overnight stubble. "I don’t know. How about we run the full spectrum of sensor scans again, OK?"

"Did that when we got here, sir," Malloy replied.

"I know," Torrance said. "But maybe we missed something."

Malloy nodded. "OK, LC. We’ll do it."

The crew stood to get to work.

"Finish the scan," Torrance said, with a grin. "Then I order you all to turn in for the night."

Scientists studied the Centauri system for decades prior to Everguard’s launch. They listened for signals and imaged it with deep-space telescopes. They scanned with radio interferometers, looking for telltale wobble.

It was Mars station that finally discovered three planets orbiting A and two that orbited B. Only the second planet from Centauri A, however, was inside the zone where liquid water–and thereby intelligent life–was possible.

Scientists quickly dubbed the planet Eden, but closer study soon determined it to be anything but.

Its atmosphere was a horrific mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, and sulfuric acid that had created a runaway greenhouse effect similar to that of Venus. In addition, models suggested that extreme tidal forces of the Centauri tri-star system would heat the planet’s core and make for a volcanic world with a stormy weather pattern that continually raged across the surface.

The search for intelligent life, they said, would have to dig deeper into the universe.

The good news was that it wasn’t his fault.

It was 0515. Torrance was early, but he knew his CO would be out of bed.

Trying to relax, he rang his CO’s bell.

"Romanov here." The captain’s voice was alert and responsive through the intercom.

"Lieutenant Commander Black, sir."

The door buzzed softly, then dilated open.

The ventilation system blew a cool breeze that made the back of Torrance’s neck crawl. The room was quiet, decorated with a row of flat-panel images of starships and other vehicles. Romanov was fourth-generation military, and his compartment showed it. The far wall, though, carried a holo of a waterfall from the backlands of Maui. A glass table with three chairs sat in the corner of the room.

The captain rose from his meditation pad, dressed in a loose robe of red terry cloth. A thin film of sweat glistened from the curve of his collarbone.

"Good morning, Captain," Torrance said.

"I think it is acceptable to be informal before 0600, Torrance," Romanov said with only a trace of his Russian heritage in his accent. He gestured toward the table. "You look as if you’ve had a very long night. Have a seat and tell me what you’ve found."

Torrance sat down, not certain how to start. The captain sat across from him.

"We have a problem."

"Yes?"

"When Everguard opened the launch doors we encountered an electromagnetic disturbance."

"I see no problem, then. Just shield what we need to shield and let’s get on with it."

"It’s not that simple."

"Why not? We’ve got inventory."

"Yes, we do," Torrance admitted. "But the disturbance is coming from outside."

"Outside of what?"

"Outside of Everguard, sir. It’s coming from the star’s second planet."

Romanov thought.

"Why didn’t it show up in our scan?"

"I checked the logs. It was there, but the configuration of the planets and the star cut the amplitude of what we received, and we overlooked it." Torrance didn’t need to add that the we who just overlooked it did not include either Torrance Black or Alexandir Romanov.

"I see." The captain clasped his hands together and leaned against the table. His gaze bore into Torrance. "So, you’re thinking that a stray burst of EMI says there may be life on Eden?"

"I don’t see how we can read it any other way."

"Despite the fact that all our examinations confirm the planet’s atmosphere is toxic?"

"Only a lifeform could produce this EMI."

"The planet is a perpetual storm," Romanov said. "It is certainly possible that such a place could generate high-energy disturbances, is it not?"

"What we’ve received has been tight, Captain, not random white noise."

"Have you run our translator programs?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"Nothing yet, sir. But just because we don’t recognize a pattern doesn’t mean one can’t exist. Our linguistic code should be reviewed before we go any further."

The ventilation system wheezed like the collected mumble of distant voices.

"Lieutenant Commander." The captain’s voice became firm, and Torrance realized the discussion had just become formal. "We have a mission to accomplish. What you’ve found is not enough to warrant a jump to the conclusion of intelligent life when everything else we know to be true discounts that."

Torrance froze. He had expected Romanov to point the finger of blame to the External Sensor Command and postpone the mission. But now the captain seemed more determined than ever to push forward.

"What if I’m right, Captain?"

"I don’t think that is the case."

"But, sir, if this is intelligent life, draining their star will leave them without energy. Whatever civilization exists here will die."

"I understand, Torrance," the captain said, his eyes blazing like dark lasers. "But even a simple trip planetside could cost us a year both ways. And who knows what we would find? Probably nothing but static-generating clouds. Do you want to hold back our understanding of the entire universe because we piddled around looking for thunderstorms in Eden?"

Torrance did not reply.

"You’re a good man, lieutenant Commander," Romanov continued. "You’ve always been a part of the team. You’re a hard worker. When the going gets tough you stick your nose into the guts of our problems and figure out how to make things work. It’s a trait I most admire in you. I know I can rely on you to do what’s right for us in the big picture."

Suddenly, Torrance understood.

This was about position. It was about expectations and power. If they diverted for a false call, the careers of every officer aboard would hang in tenuous balance. Torrance’s stomach burned, reminding him that the last thing he had eaten was the synthesized roast beef sandwich he had for lunch yesterday.

"Thank you, sir," Torrance said, more because it seemed he should than because he felt anything.

"I do understand your concerns," the captain said. "I’ll take your report to the admiral for his confirmation of my order. But our mission here is clear. I have a duty to the people of our solar system, as do you.

"Those tubes need to be shielded and another launch profile prepared as soon as possible."

"I understand," Torrance said, standing.

He understood, yes. But a cold stone formed in his stomach. The captain had just supported potential genocide of what might be an intelligent species of creatures in the name of human longevity, and he had done so with barely a second thought.

"Thank you for your work, Lieutenant Commander," Romanov said.

Torrance sighed, giving into the weight of the waves crashing around him. "The staff had a late night, sir. I’ve ordered them to their beds. But I think we can be ready to launch in roughly twenty-four hours," he replied, saluting.

"Very good. Looks like you could use some sleep yourself."

"Yes, sir."

Torrance turned and strode out of the captain’s office, his temples suddenly throbbing with a massive headache.

Torrance and Adrienne met right after he had entered the Academy. At quiet times he still thought about their wedding day, the sugary whiteness of their cake, Adrienne shoving an overly large bite into his mouth. He remembered buying their first house.

They had wanted children–Adrienne pushing for three, Torrance thinking more like ten.

But children never came.

A series of trips to fertility doctors eventually found he was the problem.

There were solutions, of course. Adoption, or donor transplants. Gene therapy. But at the time, Torrance was adamant. He couldn’t raise someone else’s children. Torrance didn’t care that everyone else in the world was doing it. It wasn’t right, and no gene therapy in the world could change the fact that every time he looked into the child’s eyes he would see his own failure.

He had been scared and embarrassed.

And like usual, he had ignored the problem, letting it fester until it grew black and malignant.

They split a couple of months before the Everguard opportunity arose. Without Adrienne in his life, he found he needed something to focus on, something to throw himself into to take the pain away. All he had at hand was the military, with its structure and its rules that dictated what to do when and how to do it. He was suited to this environment, he realized. He felt comfortable with the service, understood how it was supposed to work.

The idea of twelve years aboard the Everguard had seemed so perfect.

The staff wore their workday blues this time.

They placed shielding around the most sensitive of the firing system’s components. Torrance stared into the blackness of space. In less than two hours he would give an order that would expand his world, arguably saving it when looked at over millennia, but might doom another. The thought bubbled thickly in his gut.

He never asked for this.

His career was likely over. He would return to his own world tired and used. A forty-one-year-old man with no family, no future, and no dignity.

It was the last that twisted in his gut with an edge like a serrated hunting knife.

Deep down, Torrance knew his analysis was right. The signal was strong and cohesive. It was a message, but in a language their translator code had been unable to crack. There was life on that planet, and no argument the captain or anyone else aboard this ship could put forward would convince Torrance otherwise.

His uniform collar seemed tight against his neck.

The decision to launch the pods made him sick–made him feel exposed and dirty. He had twelve buttons to push. He was one commander. Twelve wormhole pods. One sun. One people with unknown technology.

Unknown technology, he thought. But technology at least advanced enough to release emissions that interfered with Everguard’s systems. Torrance’s heart beat with the sudden change of pattern that let him know he was on to something. An idea dawned, a thought that gnawed at him like a rodent trying to claw out of his belly.

One technology.

Energy tickled his spine. It could work, he realized. Competitive reengineering had fueled human progress for centuries. It was a huge personal risk, though, with what was left of his career at stake.

He gazed out of the observation panel.

The collider glimmered against black velvet.

Protons and neutrons raced inside the ring, scattering themselves into the netherworld of quarks and leptons–universes that lived and died in fractions of seconds. A collector gathered each of these particles, separating them and funneling each into channels where supercooled electromagnets ensured they would find their antimatter counterparts.

The resulting meeting of matter and antimatter pushed energy into the ship’s propulsion unit. Soon a small fraction of that power would be funneled off to feed the launch tubes.

Torrance closed his eyes, listening to the ship. It was a sound he loved, a gentle hiss, soft and warm, reminding him of the wind that had blown past his open window when he was a teenager in Wisconsin.

That was a long time ago.

Lives, like military careers, can be made in the span of a single collision of a neutron and a proton. And they can be broken in similar time.

Or they can merely fade away, decaying like radioactive waste with a half-life of a human being.

It was time, Torrance realized, feeling truly comfortable for the first time since he could remember.

He knew what he had to do.

"Fifteen seconds until launch," the mission controller said.

Again the admiral stood at Torrance’s side. The power coil moaned. Switches clicked and firing systems armed.

The countdown clock read ten.

Twelve probes stood ready to forge the link that would give the human race the ability to explore millions of stars.

Five.

Torrance pursed his lips, feeling oddly proud. He had done his best, and that was all that any God–or any commander, for that matter–had the right to ask of any man. Perhaps it wouldn’t be enough. But perhaps it would. And that was sometimes the most that any man could ask of himself.

Two.

One.

"Launch sequence is initiated," the controller replied.

The pods thrust against Everguard’s hull like the strikes of twelve sledgehammers. A dozen flaming arrows sliced through black space in formations of four.

One group fell toward the star, then another.

Then the last.

A single element of the last, however, edged off course, twisting slightly.

Adrenaline leapt through Torrance’s body with the pod’s initial lurch, and he stifled a proud smile. His calculations had been rapidly done, and the reprogramming had been equally hasty, but he knew this code like the back of his hand. If he got it right, the pod would land somewhere on the second planet.

With luck, whoever was there would look at it, would examine its circuitry and its propulsion system. With their new knowledge they might learn how to engineer spacefaring vessels themselves.

And they might find a way to save themselves.

The pod turned, rolling off the original flight plan and heading away from the sun.

"What’s wrong?" the admiral said.

"I’m not certain, sir," Torrance replied before Captain Romanov could. "But I’ll run a full investigation. The good news is that we have eleven birds on course and heading for home. We only need nine to be successful."

Romanov stared at Torrance, seeming to note the grin that rode his face. But he did not say anything.

Of the remaining pods, one lost power and drifted slowly toward the star, pulled to a fiery death by Centauri A’s gravity well. The rest stayed on course, and pierced the star’s surface. Thermal shielding held back the heat for the milliseconds each electronic package needed.

The wormhole actuators engaged.

Energy, hydrogen fusing to helium, began to flow.

Captain Romanov sat at his glass table, waiting patiently as Torrance entered. A cup of coffee and scraps of the captain’s dinner sat on the table.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

Romanov gestured toward an empty chair, and Torrance sat.

"That was a gutsy move, Torrance."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I’ve examined the preflight records. The last probe’s navigation software was altered."

Torrance considered denying it, but could see firmness in his CO’s eyes. "They deserved a fighting chance, sir."

The captain nodded. "Deliberately altering a mission profile without authorization is a trick that can get a man court-martialed."

Silence reigned for several heartbeats.

"We’re stealing their sun, sir," Torrance finally said. "I figure they’ve got maybe ten thousand years before their planet gets too cold to support life. If they’re of advanced technology, they’ll be able to study the pod and maybe save themselves."

"And if they’re not?"

Torrance stared into a wall scene of the Ural Mountains and waited for the captain’s other shoe to drop. He wondered if it would be court martial, or merely some form of censure. Certainly he would lose at least one rank.

"You don’t have a family, do you?" Romanov said.

"My parents live in Wisconsin."

"I mean children."

Torrance furrowed his brow. "No, sir. No children."

Romanov gave an indecipherable grunt and absentmindedly fingered his coffee cup. "I’m sorry you were passed over for promotion, Torrance. You’re a good man. But we have only so many billets."

"Thank you, sir."

"You’ve always worked hard. It is a long flight back home. A lot of good things can happen to a man who works hard for six years."

Torrance stared at his CO, who sat back in his chair and regarded him openly. Alexandir Romanov’s brown eyes told him everything Torrance needed to know. Romanov had made a snap decision. But he had understood its importance, and he had looked in the mirror since that moment knowing the extinction of a race might go against him in the end.

Now the future of that unknown species rested in a wormhole pod that was speeding off into space.

"I am thinking," the captain said, "that the report I give the admiral should describe a technical problem with the guidance software of the twelfth pod."

Torrance smiled.

"That could be done, sir."

The captain nodded. "Then make it happen," he said.

Lieutenant Commander Torrance Black walked briskly into his office. He needed to prepare a report, and he needed to think about his life, to plan.

He had six years aboard Everguard, and if any man could get back on the promotion path, it was going to be him.

And if he didn’t, well . . .

There were options.