The first of four beautiful fractals made in Apophysis 2.09 ... read to the end...
One of the things a human commander has to learn quickly in space: all of the native species and civilizations that are doing anything when you arrive have a very good reason for doing it.
A rogue commander from my fleet had accidentally wrecked an uninhabited star system with a warp field accident; we of the fleet assigned to deal with the aftermath noticed that the civilizations from the nearby star systems got together to clean up as if space could not afford one more roughly made hot asteroid field around a red hypergiant.
“Which means it can't,” mission commander Admiral Vlarian Triefield said. “Find out why.”
The answer to that – and why our ships had nearly gotten netted up and tossed into said red hypergiant for our colleague making such a mess – turned out to be familiar and chilling.
“They call them 'the Feathered Ones',” I said at the briefing, “they live in the nearby Finsternis Nebula, and they are most likely a similar species to the gem-jellies of the Cnidaria, Effulve, and Voracir systems.”
Admiral Triefield, the fleet's leading expert on gem-jellies, shook her head.
“Here we go again,” she said. “I'd probably throw anyone who attracted that kind of attention anywhere near my home into the nearest star too, although near is relative, Captain Biles-Dixon. The Finsternis Double Nebula is five light-years away.”
“Finsternis” means “darkness” but also is associated with the darkness of “eclipse” in German – two nebulae were orbiting their common gravitational center, but their associated stellar remnants had cooled a great deal, so they were relatively dark, and they were rotating fast enough so that they eclipsed one another from the viewpoint of Earth.
“So, we have five years to work with, and that is good,” I said, “because the local authorities shared with me that they have developed this cleanup system for novae, planetary nebulae, and small supernovae, because unless a star leaves enough radioactive iron in its destruction, the Feathered Ones will come and eat the rubble, nest, reproduce, and spread to the associated star systems.”
Admiral Triefield pulled up the Finsternis Double on the sensors, and all of its information came up on the screen in the briefing room.
“The way those stars died,” she said, “they left their numerous planets broken up, but not vaporized, and that is also the lowest-iron concentration region in this region of the galaxy. We have never examined it closely, but it is time that change.”
The full fleet admiral looked at the hundred commanders assembled before her both in person and remotely, and formed an expeditionary flotilla out of the resources available.
“Admiral Modell, commanding, Admiral Banneker, chief science officer. Commodores Baraka and Rumi, with Captains Dawson, Jefferson, Martinez, Tshaka, Medronho, Uicab, Plishka, and Biles-Dixon – prepare to get within medium-range of the Finsternis Nebula and scan it from there. Remember that your ships are not radioactive iron and therefore, you need not attract any attention and be followed back here. We are responsible for the mess we have already made in this region.”
“Madame Admiral,” my uncle, Adm. Benjamin Banneker said, “may I suggest we approach Finsternis not from this side, where the stellar wind of this great hypergiant will push the scent of the debris on our hulls into the nebula, but from the dark side where there will be no such issue?”
“Good thinking, Admiral,” the full fleet admiral said. “The other order that goes with that is to approach with shields up to avoid being 'smelled.” You and Admiral Modell remain with me, and we will work out details – to the rest, dismissed to your assigned duties.”
I felt a number of eyes on my back as I was departing, and I knew what it was about. I was in a rather unique position: because I had made first contact and kept our ships from being disposed of, the Amanirenas, my first command as a captain, was processing all the information th local civilizations were willing to share with the fleet. In essence, the local authorities were largely ignoring every other commander's request for communication except for Admiral Triefield's own formal apology on behalf of the fleet and the consortium it served.
Everybody knew what was going on: I had the human phenotype that was the opposite of the man who had brought destruction on a whole star system, and I had showed the opposite attitude as well. Therefore as a first-year captain, I was in a place of prominence that some other, older captains didn't feel I could handle. Bonus points, when you are Khadijah Biles-Dixon, for all of these captains being men.
“But she's got Banneker to lean on,” one said to another as those two left the room behind me, “and you know old Banneker can do no wrong, so his mantle is covering her. Ain't no way you can sit on some backwater planet for ten years and be this good otherwise as a captain.”
I smiled as I went to the transporter to return to my ship. No need for me to argue with that captain's assessment. He was right. Benjamin Banneker was the fleet's greatest science officer, brought back from retirement in the time of the fleet's need, and I had his ear at all times. I had since I had been 15, and he had retired to take me in after the death of my parents. My uncle's mantle had been a wonderful protection for me, and I was glad I still had it.
But, from day to day, I had been a commander for ten years. Running a planetary station on a desperately damaged world was more complicated than running a starship. Things moved when I spoke as a starship captain; people had the resources they needed to get things done. Yet I couldn't explain that either, any more than I could explain that I had come back for the opportunity to serve alongside the uncle I adored, and to complete a full 20 years of service to the fleet. I didn't need the job for my ambition, and people who did couldn't understand.
By the following morning, we were positioned in range of the Finsternis Double, and Admiral Banneker came up on the bridge.
“Admiral on the bridge,” I said as I led the bridge crew in standing and yielding our chairs.
“At ease,” he said. “That's the only order I came to give, Captain Biles-Dixon. I just came in person to see if our sensors are picking up visually what they should be picking up in terms of raw information.”
“Not yet,” I said as I handed him the tablet my first officer had handed me, “but we don't even want to be around here by then.”
The Finsternis Double's orbit pattern was unstable, and had been picking up speed for a long, long time, circling the drain of its common center of gravity. Cmdr. Allemande was ship's science officer, and he had been noting the “expected abnormalities” should the process reach the stage in which the Finsternis Double was ready to become the Finsternis Single – a merger of nebulae and their common cores.
“Admiral Modell has been informed, Admiral Banneker,” I said. “We are at all stop, awaiting further orders.”
“With your permission, Captain,” he said, “I would like to assist Cmdr. Allemande.”
Cmdr. Allemande was normally quite impassive, but he looked up with his blue eyes about ready to fall out of his head, and then looked at me with the most eloquent unspoken plea I had ever seen. The younger science officer was a great admirer of my uncle, but was too shy to introduce himself.
“Admiral,” I said gently, “make yourself at home. Cmdr. Allemande, see to it that the admiral has whatever he wants.”
Cmdr. Allemande gave up his chair – he leaped up, overjoyed.
“Sit back down, Commander,” Adm. Banneker said. “It's your station, and my legs are bionic. They never get tired. It's your station and I need you to bring me up to date with how young science officers are looking at things like this.”
My uncle, from a higher position, always knew how to fill those coming after him with respect and honor and encouragement … his latest mentee fell in love with him like everyone else who had ever known him. It was still hard for me to process how a man had let jealousy of Benjamin Banneker move him to destroy himself and a star system, but, my husband, Captain Rufus Dixon of the commercial fleet, often gave me perspective.
“The life of men is different,” he said. “An evil man will go to hell gladly if by that he can keep another man from a heaven he in his evil cannot get to. Benjamin Banneker's greatness in service of the fleet but in relative personal obscurity was tolerable, but we may not have seen the end of peers and near-peers reacting unfavorably now that his star is out of eclipse. Watch his back, and watch yours too, Khadijah.”
But, meanwhile, Cmdr. Helmut Allemande, that good man and loyal companion of my first command, sat in his joy, bringing the admiral up to date and drinking in all of the older officer's insights.
Commodore Baraka hailed me.
“We've got a month before we need to get out of here,” he said, “so, make your time count, Captain, from right here.”
Two nebulae merging was in essence having two entire star systems reorganizing their centers of gravity and extruding what ever was moving too fast to go into the new orbit. We had arrived on the very day that the common center of gravity had started to shift, and although we could predict 95 percent of what was going to happen, that was nowhere near close to enough for safety.
The Amanirenas was with Commodore Baraka's group of ships, and even with the capacity of our four ships and the four more in Commodore Rumi's group, the Finsternis Double was a massive object to scan and thick with dust. It resembled two whirlpools on a dark sea, colliding, and, accounting for scale, that was in essence what it was, turbulent and hard to see through.
Nonetheless, the Kipling, under the command of Captain Dawson, captured this first image known of a feather-gem-jelly eating, making of its mouth a great straw to suck up a nice collection of space rocks.
We could see why they were called “The Feathered Ones” – although they were of the same composition as their cousins in the Voracir, Effulve, and Cnidaria systems, they had the kind of delicate beauty and movement that suggested something lighter than a gemstone … more of the feathers of a hummingbird, or the throat of a pigeon, shimmering in different colors depending on the angle seen. Although their basic color appeared to be green, a momentary clearing of dust allowed one, in starlight, to transform...
“Well, isn't that adorable?” Captain Tshaka said. “The kind of thing my daughters would just love to have with that heart and all.”
“They are incredibly beautiful,” I said, “and they are doing what we need to be doing, soon, getting on a move.”
The feather-gem-jellies knew what time it was in the Finsternis Double. They were massing along the edges of the larger of the two merging nebulae (hence the greater bands of greenish color in the larger nebula), and we had seen the two individuals in question as the head of the latest group to be on the move.
Thirty-eight days after we arrived outside the Finsternis Nebula, we saw material from the smaller nebula being sucked directly into the larger one. The merger had officially begun, and the gravitational waves of this were a week behind our being able to feel them.
“Time to go,” Admiral Modell said six days later. “All ships, deploy probes and buoys, and prepare to go to warp, on my mark.”
No science officers like to leave observation to machines, but we all understand that at the scale of merging star systems, even our finest starships are like toothpicks in a raging sea. We obeyed orders and cleared the area on Admiral Modell's command.
Over in the cleanup zone, a local admiral contacted me for news, and I had good news for him.
“Because of the merger of the Finsternis Double, the feather-gem-jellies are taking refuge in the large nebula, facing away from all the inhabited systems of this region. It is highly unlikely that they will be coming in this direction for another ten thousand years or so.”
I passed across the data my fleet had compiled, and the local admiral smiled.
“Thank you all,” he said in his rustling voice. “We believe you now, that it was a crazy man you did not know should not have such power. We know you all, now., and soon, if you continue to do well, we will see each other, face to face.”
And from that day, the local civilizations opened full communication with the consortium my fleet served, and we were able to agree upon a joint cleanup effort. The professional fleet largely withdrew from that area when this was done, since readings from our probes and buoys showed that the feather-gem-jellies were hunkering down, not to move again from safe positions until after the Finsternis Double completed its transition.
“That would have been a perfect job for our newest captain – staying behind to watch stuff happen, since she's really good at that,” one jealous captain said to another as we were all heading out of the last debriefing.
“Yeah, but, she's got Banneker on board, so that can never happen – he has to be at the leading edge of everything!”
I smiled as I returned to the bridge of the Amanirenas, and saw my uncle standing in his new favorite place on the ship, mentoring Cmdr. Allemande. What a blessing it was!
Still, my husband cautioned me yet again when we spoke that night.
“Remember, Khadijah, men are different. I know you documented what you are hearing and are sending it up the line to Admirals Modell and Triefield.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Remember: an evil man will have no problem going to hell if he thinks he can take you with him,” Rufus said to me. “You know I'm praying with you, daily and almost hourly, and I wish I could be there with you, but, fleet life for both of us in different fleets. The only way I can protect you is by telling you the strict truth. Watch your back, Khadijah. Humans are humans no matter what uniform they wear, and resentful men will find a way.”
“I hear you loud and clear, Rufus,” I said. “I'm watching, and praying, and if I have to fight, I'm ready.”