It is the Chemist's Holiday! Happy Ester, everyone!
Have some wordz 
"Wow."
"It's impressive, isn't it, Mom?"
"That's an understatement if I've ever heard one, dear. I never thought I'd see anything like this, I have to admit."
Everyone on the ship was staring at the image in glorious perfect color and incredibly high resolution of Saturn as seen from above the north pole, the weird hexagonal polar vortex showing up nicely. It was lit from the side by the sun, and from within by lightning, bolts of electricity so enormous they contained more energy than the entirety of humanity generated in a year flashing deep in the clouds on the dark side leaving brilliant trails of ionized gas. The ring system stood out fantastically against the black of space, sunlight streaming over them at a slight angle from above and casting the vast shadow of the planet itself across the outer side of the rings. Several of the closer moons could easily be made out as small half-illuminated spheres.
No one said anything more for some time. After a few minutes Kilzen reached out and tapped a control. An eerie hissing wailing sound interspersed with clicks, pops, and noises like a distressed whale formed a background soundtrack to their viewing, all sitting on top of a distant crackling remarkably similar to the sound of a campfire slowly burning down to ash.
"The radio noise of the solar system," he said softly, his antennae set at an angle showing interest, thought, and happiness. "The sound of the magnetic fields, the charged particles spiraling through them, gravity acting on the whole… It fills space around us if you listen correctly..."
"Freaky," Vicky whispered, her eyes wide as she looked at the screen. Amy nodded next to her, while Emma was leaning forward with her hands clasped, simply staring in awe. Taylor's dad was smiling to himself, she noticed when she looked over her shoulder, and she could swear he had a tear in his eye. He noticed her looking at him and nodded, making her nod back with a smile.
"This was a good first stop, Taylor," Zex said from next to her, putting one hand on her arm. "Thank you for creating us so we could see this."
Taylor patted her friend's hand, feeling her emotions as clearly as her own. "It was my pleasure, you know that. Thank you guys for being… you guys."
The sound of the door to the bridge opening made her look around again to see Über and Leet come in, then stop dead and simply stare in stunned amazement. Eventually the former said with a sort of shocked incredulity to his voice, "You really need this big screen to get the full impact, don't you?" He shook his head in wonder as Leet nodded wordlessly.
It was a good twenty minutes of observing Saturn and listening to the soundtrack of the universe before Taylor nodded, sitting up straight. "We can come back and look at it again whenever we want. Let's get on with some other stuff."
"Your orders, Hive Mother?" Kilzen immediately said, snapping to attention with his antennae straight up, making quite a lot of the others laugh and Zex sigh heavily.
"Deploy some survey probes," Taylor replied. "We'll pick them up on the way back. Lots of nice images and data to give to NASA. Bet those guys will love it." She grinned while Emma laughed loudly.
"They're going to shit themselves," Vicky pointed out with a smirk.
"At least," Fess chuckled from where he was standing near the back of the room. The robotic horse had been watching the view with at least as much awe as everyone else. "It'll be hilarious."
"Probes launched," Kilzen reported seconds later. Laytor, one of the other Hive members on a separate console, tapped a few controls and nodded.
"Getting good telemetry," she said. "Probe mission loaded, course set, all probes report full functionality."
"Excellent. So, then… where next?" Taylor looked around at her friends. "Do we stick around the local area and look at the planets, or go have a
proper test of the ship?"
"We can do the solar system any time," Amy pointed out, smiling. "Let's go look at a
different solar system."
"That's got my vote," her sister nodded.
"Mom? Dad? Any preferences?" Taylor queried, looking over her shoulder.
"This is your mission, Taylor, we're only observers," her dad replied with a small smile. "We're happy just to be here, wherever you go."
Taylor glanced at Zex, who nodded. "In that case, set course to Alpha Centauri, Number One. Why mess with the classics?"
Kilzen flicked his antenna in acknowledgment and worked on his console for a few seconds. The view of Saturn on the screen slewed sideways and down, the starfield crossing it until it slowed and stopped with one quite bright one in the dead center of the view. In an inset window on the bottom right was an image of Saturn, while another on the bottom left showed the Sun. Various readings were down both sides listing course, velocity, energy output, and a host of other data. "Course set. Long range sensors active. Imaging downconversion ready. Drive on standby, level one transluminal velocity enabled for initial solar system exit. Ready to engage on your order, Hive Mother."
"Do it," Taylor said firmly.
"Your wish is my command," he replied, tapping a control, his voice amused. Zex sighed again, although Taylor could tell she was hiding a laugh.
The same sensation as they'd experienced recently reoccurred as the drive came online. Everything seemed to twist in a direction that didn't really exist, and every source of illumination on the bridge briefly gained a rainbow fringe that came and went almost before it could be seen, while at the same time there was a distinct sensation of a pulse of cold passing through them for a fraction of a second. The window showing Saturn showed the planet shrink to a point in mere moments, while the view of the Sun rapidly diminished in brightness as the ship accelerated almost instantly from a standstill to many times the speed of light.
"Level one reached in nine hundred and four milliseconds, velocity one thousand two hundred
c. Time to heliopause forty five seconds from… mark." Kilzen's voice was steady, which at the back of her mind Taylor felt was in a way one of the more surprising things about this whole adventure.
They watched the sun recede to a somewhat brighter star than any of the others, even the ship's telescopes only resolving it as a point by this time. Shortly Kilzen said, "Crossing heliopause. Drive level two set… initiated." This time the sensation of
something happening lasted a little longer, and the graphic showing the distance to Earth on the main screen started increasing much more rapidly. "Velocity thirty eight thousand
c. Time to Alpha Centauri heliopause fifty nine minutes forty one seconds from… mark."
He looked at Taylor. "Would you like to go to level three?"
"No sense rushing things," she replied serenely, ignoring Leet behind her choking slightly.
"'
No sense rushing things', she says, while we're going from Sol to Alpha Centauri in
under an hour and we're not even going flat out," the Tinker said, his voice expressing a lot of different emotions at the same time. She glanced back and grinned at him, getting a shake of his head back. His eyes were alight with enjoyment.
"We knew level one worked fine, that got us to Saturn. Level two needs to be tested properly before we step it up a notch, right? This
is a shakedown cruise after all," she replied with a giggle.
"As you command, Captain," he replied, saluting lazily, then turning to the console he was sitting at and studying the instruments closely. She barely heard him mutter, "I can't
believe I get to do this," to himself, making her smile as she returned her attention to the main screen. On it Alpha Centauri was slowly and visibly brightening while in the smaller window their own sun was getting just as slowly fainter.
Feeling very pleased indeed with the way things were going, she sent a wave of gratitude to her special friend, who returned it with amusement.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"So where are your cousins, Crystal?" Crystal Pelham looked over at her friend Angela who was giving her a curious look as they along with a few others headed to the restaurant. "Did they go somewhere for spring break or something?"
"Yeah, a friend of theirs invited them on a road trip for a week," she replied, nodding. "Aunt Carol wasn't all that happy about the idea, but Mom pointed out that Vicky and Amy have hardly ever left Brockton and they're old enough to be trusted to handle themselves. She talked to their friend's mom, then Aunt Carol, and in the end she gave in. So they're running around enjoying themselves far away from here, I guess."
"I hope they went somewhere warm," Angela laughed. "It's still colder than I like."
"It's only the end of March, Ange," Crystal giggled. "It'll be nice when spring really gets here. But yeah, I think they were going to cover quite a lot of distance, just wander around and stop anywhere interesting, that sort of thing. No real firm plans or anything."
"The trip is more fun than the destination, I guess?"
"That's the basic idea. Amy said they'd just stop here and there and look around, maybe find some souvenirs, take a lot of photos, then end up back here." Crystal shrugged. "It sounded like fun. And she certainly needs a break. With Vicky along I doubt there's much risk."
"Except to anything breakable," Angela quipped with a sly grin, making Crystal burst out laughing.
"She's not
that bad…"
"Wanna bet? I've
seen PHO." The pair laughed some more, then hurried after the others as someone called for them. Later, while they were watching the movie they'd ended up choosing, Crystal hoped her cousins were having as much fun on their brief vacation as she was.
They'd even left before that Hive ship had flown out of the bay, so they'd missed the most incredible thing she'd ever seen in her life right here at home!
Never mind. She could tell them all about it when they got back. And tease them about how they'd gone on a trip to see cool things and the coolest thing
ever had happened hours after they'd gone...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Wow."
"You said that already."
"I know. But look at
that! It's an entirely new solar system no one from Earth has ever seen before! That's worth a second wow if anything is."
Everyone gazed at the screen, on which a brilliant white star could be seen as a disk, with a slightly differently-colored pinprick of light showing off to one side and above it. The first one was Alpha Centauri A, a marginally larger near twin to Sol, while the second was Alpha Centauri B, a somewhat smaller, cooler star, the pair forming two of the stars of the trinary Alpha Centauri system. The third one, the tiny red dwarf Proxima Centauri, wasn't visible from this angle as it was behind them at the moment and a substantially greater distance away than either of the two larger stars were from each other.
And Taylor's mother was right. This was definitely well into second wow territory. Taylor looked back and met her parent's eyes with a smile, seeing them holding each other's hands and looking fascinated as well as very happy. Her dad grinned at her, before going back to staring at the image.
"Mapping scan complete," Kilzen announced, tapping controls and emoting enormous satisfaction. The entire crew was at work, although they were spending at least as much time looking at the view as at their instruments. "Four planets found. A sub-Jovian gas giant, approximately thirty percent larger than Neptune, orbiting at just over one AU from the primary, is the largest one. There is a very small, very hot rocky planet, seventy percent the diameter of Mercury, in remarkably close orbit, with an estimated orbital period of forty six point four days. The surface temperature is nearly at the melting point of copper at just over one thousand degrees centigrade. Another rocky planet at two point three AU, roughly twice the diameter of Mars, surface temperature reading as between negative sixty and plus fifteen centigrade. And another gas giant, smaller than Neptune, at just over one hundred and four AU."
"Scanning for moons currently," Laytor commented as she worked. "Probes in position, deep scan now active. Getting good telemetry… And found a moon of the big gas planet. Another. Two more. Large rocky planet has two as well, smaller than Luna. More on the big one. Two… three… six for the distant gas giant. And a thin asteroid belt at fifteen AU, much less dense than ours but reading high in heavy metals."
"That might be useful," Leet commented, looking intrigued as well as completely focused.
"If no one else is using it, we can probably help ourselves," Amy put in with a grin. "Finders keepers, right?"
"That
is the law in space, I believe," her sister agreed gravely, before giggling.
"Any aliens yet?" Emma queried eagerly.
"No," Kilzen chuckled, examining his instruments, then looking up at the main screen again. "But we've detected eight moons around the big gas planet so far, the largest very close to the size of Earth itself, the smallest only some two hundred kilometers across." He inspected the console and prodded it a few times, his antenna lifting in surprise. "Interesting."
"Explain." Zex gave him an expectant look.
"The gas giant is orbiting well within what is considered the life zone, in other words the right distance to allow the surface temperature of a planet to fall inside the range considered viable for life as known to us to exist. The biggest moon has an atmosphere dense enough to retain heat but not dense enough to turn into a Venus-type runaway greenhouse planet. The calculated surface pressure is approximately one hundred and eighteen kilopascals, less than twenty percent higher than Earth's atmosphere. Average surface temperature is thirty one centigrade. Gravity is one point zero five G. Rotational period is… on the order of twenty nine hours." He looked around at them. "It's a remarkably close analog of Earth in most of the critical parameters. We could walk around on it with nothing more than breathing gear. The atmospheric composition is seventy percent nitrogen, ten percent argon, two percent neon, half a percent each of xenon and helium, with the balance being carbon dioxide."
"No oxygen?" Amy asked.
"No. Which implies the lack of any form of life known to us, although it doesn't necessarily prove it doesn't exist. Nor that there's something
not known to us living there." Kilzen made a gesture of uncertainty. "There is certainly a vast amount of oxygen bound up in the minerals on the surface, liquid water is abundant although not to the extent it is on Earth, and the temperature, pressure, and gravity are all entirely survivable. It even has a decent magnetosphere, so it must have a molten iron core. No indications of excessive radiation although the background is somewhat higher than Earth is due to the gas giant's proximity. As far as we can tell from here, if it had enough oxygen you could live on it quite comfortably although it's on the warm side."
"Cool," Über remarked with a laugh. "First try out of the gate and we found a near-Earth world. Pity there's no aliens."
"The third planet is also, barely, within a range that could almost be considered habitable," one of the other crew, Ganror, put in. "Again, no life signs as such, and the atmospheric pressure is rather low at some eighty one kilopascals, but the equatorial regions are warm enough to be survivable. The poles are much too cold to be much fun though. Small ice caps, not a lot of water, but it's there."
"What about the other moons?" Taylor's father asked curiously. Kilzen studied the instruments, then shook his head.
"Two more roughly two thirds as large as the biggest one, but one is a near copy of Io, so incredibly volcanic and extremely hot, the other is probably what Europa would look like if it was much warmer. Entirely covered in an extremely deep ocean, no land at all. The rest are all much smaller and have no atmosphere worth mentioning."
"That water one might be the most likely place to find life if it's anywhere in the system," Amy commented thoughtfully, staring at the screen as it switched to a view from one of the probes they'd sent out the moment they arrived in the system, which was now close enough to the planet in question that it could get a nice view of the water world. "If it's warm enough to have liquid water, it's warm enough to have at least bacteria."
"True," Kilzen replied with a nod. "We're not detecting much if any free oxygen, or anything like phytoplankton reflective spectra, but that makes the assumption that any life here would be based on the same mechanism we are. Without a lot more work it would be hard to tell."
"Can we get samples of the water?" she asked hopefully.
Kilzen looked at Taylor, who smiled and nodded. "As the Hive Mother wills, so shall it be," he intoned with a humorous set to his antennae, making Zex sigh heavily and Taylor start laughing. Amy grinned widely.
"Collection probe launched," Laytor said a moment later. "It's programmed to acquire surface samples in two dozen locations around the moon, from the equator to the poles, along with detailed measurements and imagery, then return."
"Get probes out to image everything else, while we're at it," Taylor instructed. "Might as well collect all the data possible."
"The fabricators are manufacturing more probes already," Zex remarked, looking down at her own console. "We may need to stop at one of the asteroids and do a little quick mining to replenish the consumables if we're going to be spamming hundreds of probes everywhere we go." She sounded somewhat amused as well as pleased.
"No reason not to, is there?" Taylor asked with a grin.
"Littering ordinances?" Emma suggested, laughing.
"We'll pick them up later!" Taylor retorted. "No one will mind."
Her friend snickered, making her stick her tongue out at the red-head. "Very captain-like behavior," Emma added with a grin. "Jean-Luc would be highly impressed."
Vicky and Amy collapsed laughing while Taylor put on a haughty look. "I will have you know I was trained by the best," she stated calmly, before starting to laugh as well.
"Star Fleet has nothing on us," Leet chortled. "We're faster if nothing else."
"Let's go and have a closer look that moon while the probes collect data," Zex commented. "I'm curious to see what it looks like on the surface."
"Sounds like a plan. Engage, Number One."
"That is a very small model railway, Hive Mother," Kilzen commented with a flick of his antennae and a sly look over his shoulder. Even Taylor winced at that one. Chuckling to himself he hit the go button and the ship zipped off at high speed.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Wow."
"Well, I have to admit this does meet the Wow Protocols," Danny said with a laugh, making sure his rebreather mask was fitted correctly over his face. His wife poked him in the ribs, her eyes sparkling, then went back to looking around. Behind them, the Hive ship was sitting on its landing legs on a high plateau, a location they'd picked after a short but careful survey from orbit. It was a good two kilometers higher than sea level, almost entirely flat on top, and several square kilometers in area. To the west was an ocean, a deep blue-violet color with whitecaps scudding across the surface in a scene that was at the same time familiar and deeply unusual to them all.
It was warm, like a nice summer day, and humid, but both cooler and drier than it would be at sea level, which was why they'd picked this spot to look around. The view was astounding, he mused as he looked out over the alien sea, feeling a sense of incredulity that he was able to do that, and immense pride in his daughter and her friends that they'd managed to pull this entire incredible thing off.
The light from the star was quite intense but bearable as it set over the ocean, the polarized faceplate of the breathing mask cutting out the glare, while their readings showed that the somewhat deeper atmosphere filtered out more of the UV than at home, so it was actually quite safe. The most dangerous thing here was the lack of oxygen, which meant that if they took the masks off they'd end up unconscious in seconds, but he was very familiar with the issues surrounding inhaling non-breathable gases from his own background and had made very sure to impress on everyone that they were
not under
any circumstances to remove their breathing support. The Hive members had a rather different method of breathing than humans did, but they also had the right equipment to survive the conditions here.
The ship's onboard fabrication facilities were more than up to making anything they needed, including the small drones that Leet and Kilzen had quickly produced and sent out to survey the entire area with high resolution imaging from the air. One of these whined past him as he thought that, disappearing into the distance within seconds as it gained altitude.
Turning to the right, he looked south, where a massive mountain range lay right on the horizon, the peaks glittering with snow far, far in the distance. They'd measured the tallest one in that particular range as well over twelve thousand meters, meaning it made Everest look like a hill with aspirations to greatness. He wondered if people in years to come would be climbing it and competing to see who could kill themselves in the most bone-headed manner…
Looking to the left, northwards, he could see that the hills that their landing spot was part of diminished until they were ultimately replaced with a vast plain, which stretched out of sight over the horizon. Light glinted from thin silver threads of rivers, lakes, and the occasional outcrop of particularly shiny minerals. No green was visible anywhere, of course, the landscape mostly being muted shades of brown, red, and yellow, but there were occasional brilliantly colored bands of some mineral or other, ranging through the entire spectrum. Without oxygen in the atmosphere to oxidize anything, he suspected that there would be plentiful metals found in their native state, from volcanic eruptions if nothing else. Indeed, far to the north they'd already spotted one active volcano spewing out clouds of ash and lava, but they'd landed a long way away from it to be safe.
Peering upwards he studied the clouds slowly moving overhead. The sky was a rather deeper shade of blue than back home, but overall looked pretty much exactly like he was used to, giving the impression of having the color saturation turned up a bit. Alpha Centauri A shone brilliantly down on them, warming their skin, gradually descending and becoming redder and redder. Nothing other than clouds moved in the sky, so after a while, he lowered his gaze to meet his wife's eyes.
She smiled at him, then both of them turned around to look away from the ocean.
The view in this direction completely eclipsed even the incredible sights elsewhere. Seen illuminated from the top right, the currently unnamed gas giant totally dominated the horizon. At the point in both the orbit and rotation of the moon they were on, which was only a moon because it was circling this vast ball of gas, the huge planet formed a nearly perfect hemisphere covering a good quarter of the view, rising high into the sky. It was at least a couple of dozen times the apparent size of the full moon seen from Earth, and far, far more impressive. Lightning storms the size of a planet could be seen at the visible pole, and bands of multi-colored gas streamed around its circumference in manner reminiscent of Jupiter on a smaller scale. If anything it was more colorful, he thought with awe.
There was a barely visible thin ring around it, tilted up at a forty or so degree angle from left to right, far less impressive than Saturn's but still amazing. And he could just about make out two of the smaller moons, tiny pinpricks of light that were visibly moving since they were so close to the planet.
All in all it was the single most spectacular sight he'd ever encountered, if you ignored the actual space travel part. He wondered what it would be like to live here and see
that every night…
In silhouette against the gas giant, their ship squatted on the ground, the sight somehow making the entire thing seem even more fantastic. As the sun lowered the purple of the hull darkened, the running lights outlining the entire craft nicely. It was like something from a really
good SF novel from the sixties, he thought with a sense of complete satisfaction. Back when people looked to the future and nothing seemed impossible, before Parahumans showed up and proved that nothing
was impossible but in a very horrible way.
He much preferred what it was like now. And he suspected than when everyone else got used to the sudden change, they would too, but there was going to be a
lot of serious confusion for quite a while yet. Which made him grin to himself.
Husband and wife stood there watching the planet rise, the scene gradually darkening as the alien sun set behind them, him with his arm over her shoulders, her with her arm around his waist, watching their daughter and her friends run around studying everything in sight. Leet and Kilzen were fiddling with another piece of equipment they'd put together a ways off to the right, while Fess was overseeing it and undoubtedly making snarky comments about how they were doing it wrong. Amy and Vicky were poking around in a pile of rocks to the side, the latter lifting the big ones like they were made of styrofoam while her sister rummaged in the exposed dirt underneath.
He assumed she was trying to find any signs of actual life, her ability probably about the best tool there was for that job. Both seemed to be enjoying themselves. Taylor and Zex were talking quietly some distance away in the other direction, both of them relaxing on some suitably shaped rocks. Emma was taking photos of everything with her phone, running around all over the place. She paused in front of them and took a quick shot of the pair, grinned, and moved off to photograph Amy and Vicky. Über was sitting on a folding chair he'd found somewhere, just staring at the rising gas giant and radiating a sense of complete happiness that Danny could almost feel. The rest of the crew had spread out over the entire plateau to investigate it.
A few minutes later, Taylor and Zex came over to join them. Taylor took both her parent's hands in hers, smiling at them. "I'm glad you came," she said quietly.
"So are we, dear," Annette replied as softly, smiling back. He was struck yet again how similar they were to each other. Zex looked between them, then met his eyes with her huge compound ones, her antennae in a position indicating extreme happiness.
"Existence is worth it for so many things, but this is one of the better ones," she commented, making Taylor laugh and both Danny and Annette smile. "Thank you again, Taylor."
Putting her arm over her friend's exoskeleton, Taylor replied, "You are more than welcome, Zex. Thank you all for being my friends." Zex touched Taylor's forehead with her antenna in a light gesture of respect and pleasure, making the girl grin. Then she looked up at the sky, before peering past Danny at the nearly-set star.
"In about five minutes I think it's going to get better," she commented.
Taylor looked at her, then followed her eyes, before she showed an expression of realization. "Oooh… Yeah, I wonder if that will happen?"
"It should do, based on all the environmental parameters," her friend replied. Danny looked at each of them, then Annette, who shrugged.
"
What should happen?" he asked curiously.
Taylor studied the sun, then turned around as it finished setting, darkness sweeping across the sea towards them. Danny looked over his shoulder just in time to see the last fragment of the star vanish, and blinked as a moment later there was a deep green flash of light where it had been. "Holy shit," he murmured, knowing what it was, but never having seen it before. He'd never thought he'd see such a thing on another planet…
"Oh my god," Annette breathed, making him turn to her. She was staring upwards, as were Zex and Taylor. He followed their eyes, then gaped in astonishment.
None of them said another word for some time. Around them, the sound of the others doing things died away, as everyone else also turned their gazed upwards towards the north.
He'd seen the northern lights back home. On a good night in the middle of winter if you were far enough away from a city, even at the latitude Brockton Bay was, you could fairly often make them out, and occasionally he'd seen some quite remarkable examples of the phenomenon. He'd also seen long-exposure photos from much further north, in Canada and Scandinavia, which were incredible.
Not one of them was even a pale shadow of what he was looking at now.
Far above them, brilliant colored curtains of light waved and flexed, reds and greens such as you'd find on Earth joined with yellow, orange, blue, violet, every color of the rainbow and then some, all far brighter than he'd even imagined possible. Vast columns of glowing gas seemed to stretch to infinity, changing shape slowly and continuously, while surrounded with streamers of other colors that whipped past in an intangible wind at fantastic velocity. He fancied he could almost
hear it, some far off crackling like a campfire suitable for the gods, mixed with a rustling noise like tearing silk.
It was the single most beautiful thing he'd ever seen other than his wife and daughter.
After a long, long, total silence on the plateau, Zex said almost dreamily, "The atmosphere here is rich in noble gases, far more so than at home, hence the unusual colors. The magnetic field interactions between the gas giant and this planet, combined with the more active stellar wind from the primary, pump much more energy into the upper layers of the atmosphere, making the aurora vastly brighter than on Earth. It probably extends down to the equator, which is very rare at home. The end result is this. I have never seen anything so incredible."
Annette, shaking her head, said "Wow."
Then she nearly fell over laughing, as he did as well. Taylor and Zex exchanged a glance and shook their heads as one, making him and his wife only laugh harder.
"We may need to revisit the Wow Protocols if this is what they're going to do," Taylor commented with a raised eyebrow, grinning.
"The Hive Grandmother is easily impressed," Zex agreed, her antennae at a sly angle.
The laughter died away after a while, but they kept looking at the aurora for at least another hour.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Where to next, Taylor?" Amy looked at the taller girl, who was sitting in her seat studying the star map on the screen. They'd spent most of a day on the still-unnamed planet-sized moon, just exploring it and reveling in the sense of being on another world, which she thought was going to take a long time to become anything but unusual. Not that she minded, as this was enormous fun. After that they'd spent another two days poking around in the systems of Alpha Centauri B and Proxima Centauri, finding a few more planets in the process. Centauri B had one small gas giant at a very long period orbit, cold and frozen with five small moons, and two separate but sparse asteroid belts, while Proxima Centauri had five planets, one somewhat larger than Earth rock one very close to the tiny dwarf, a small gas giant with a few small moons about one and a half AU from it, a very small rock one half way between them, and a frozen ball of ice at some thirty AU that was probably a captured Oort cloud body according to Kilzen and the others.
Now they were sitting some distance from Proxima Centauri, the star a dim red dot on the screen, while they tried to work out the next destination. There were too many choices, she thought, that was the problem. They could go almost anywhere, but they had to be home for school in a few days.
It occurred to her that the juxtaposition of exploring new worlds with being home in time for school was probably one of the weirder things she'd ever come across, even in their world…
"We still need to test the drive properly," Leet put in.
Taylor looked at him, then at Kilzen. She nodded. "True enough. Yeah, let's do that first, then come back and look at some more star systems. We're not on a schedule or anything." Kilzen turned to his console.
"Awaiting destination, Oh Glorious One."
"Ooh, I like that," Taylor giggled. Zex shook her head, making a sort of four handed throttling gesture at Kilzen's back, which made Amy grin. "Take us up."
Kilzen looked back at her, his antennae cocked inquisitively. "Up?"
She pointed at the ceiling. "Up. Head straight out along the galactic axis. We need a lot of room, and the view will be
amazing."
He nodded his understanding with a flick of one antenna, appearing pleased, and turned back. They watched as the view shifted, Proxima Centauri vanishing downwards and a brief sight of the galactic core showing, before the number of stars dropped off noticeably. "Course set. Long range sensors active. Imaging downconversion ready. Drive on standby, level one transluminal velocity enabled for initial solar system exit. Ready, Hive Mother."
"Hit it, Kilzen," Taylor ordered with a smile.
"Hitting it," he replied, the ship instantly jumping to translight velocities. "Heliopause in fifteen seconds… Heliopause reached. Drive level two set… initated. Entering interstellar space in fifty seconds."
They waited the requisite time. "Level three?" he queried.
"Level three."
"Drive level three set." Kilzen operated his console with sure motions. "Initiated." The odd sensation they were becoming used to came and went, just a fraction longer than level two produced. "Level three reached in one thousand four hundred milliseconds. Velocity one point two one six million c."
"All systems performing to nominal specification," Leet reported from another console. "One light year every twenty five seconds. Fucking hell."
The screen was showing visible movement of stars across the whole view as they tore out of the galactic plane at well over a million times the speed of light. At this velocity it would take less than three minutes to have covered the distance from Earth to Alpha Centauri, Amy realized, stunned even though she knew the specification of the ship pretty well. It was a lot different
experiencing it than
reading about it.
"Level four," Taylor instructed.
"Are you sure, Hive Mother?" Kilzen asked with a glance back. "That
will require that I operate a different control."
"Oh, for…" Zex grumbled as Taylor grinned.
"Go for it."
He very deliberately moved his hand to a separate section of the panel and flipped up a cover, then pressed the control under it. It lit up a nice blue shade.
"Are you done?" Zex queried with asperity. "You know full well that's the landing lights."
"It seemed appropriate," Kilzen replied without a hint of shame, while Taylor laughed helplessly. Returning his hands to the main flight controls, he worked for a moment. "Level four set… Initiated."
Again the sensation of telling the universe to get out of the way came and went. "Level four reached in sixteen hundred and five milliseconds. Velocity thirty eight point nine one million C."
"Reactor at maximum output, everything stable," Leet said with satisfaction. "We need a larger reactor if we want to get to level five, but we're fine like this."
The ship screamed out of the galaxy at more than a light year per second, going directly
up relative to the galactic north pole. The view astern, which had begun as a normal star-field, steadily changed at a surprising speed, the stars moving closer and closer and structure beginning to become apparent. Everyone watched with amazement as over the next few minutes, the entire Milky Way came into view in a way that was awe inspiring. When they finally slowed and stopped nearly forty thousand light years '
above' the galaxy, no one could find words to say for quite a long time.
In fact, they sat and looked at the view, home being some infinitesimal part of an infinitesimal part of this one galaxy, one of more than could be counted in the observable universe, without saying a thing until Taylor nodded to Kilzen, who silently prodded controls. The trip back from the darkness and cold of intergalactic space to the relative warmth of two hundred billion stars all flying in close formation came almost as a relief.
Even the Wow Protocols were insufficient at this point.
Amy could, somehow, almost sense that her own power was as awestruck as the rest of them at the sight, and seemed grateful that it had had the opportunity to see it. She wondered if she was imagining things, and was still wondering that when they went off to look at another star system.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"What is it?"
Everyone looked at the results of the scan, symbols on the screen attached to various lumps of rock floating around the star Zeta1 Reticuli.
"It's… a debris field," Laytor finally answered, studying her own displays, then looking up at the main screen. "Not an asteroid belt. The trajectories of the various fragments converge to a single location within a fairly recent period. The total amount detected is roughly correct for a rock planet approximately one point four times the size of Earth. And there are indications of refined metals in the cloud, as well as several polymers."
Everyone stared at her, then at the screen. "That was an inhabited planet," Taylor said quietly.
Laytor nodded slowly. "Yes. I believe so."
"What happened to it?" Emma asked in a low voice.
"Unsure," Laytor said, still working, as were several others. Kilzen and Leet were on the other side of the room working together on one console, discussing something very quietly. Fess was standing next to them watching silently over his creator's shoulder. "A massively energetic event, certainly. At least enough energy to overcome the gravitational binding energy of the planet, which is… significant."
"It's like Alderaan," Leet commented over his shoulder. "But no sign of a Death Star. Thank fuck."
"The amount of energy it would take to disrupt an entire planet to this extent is unbelievable," Zex noted, inspecting the screen with great attention. "An impact with a rogue planet, perhaps?"
"No, there's not enough debris for that, and the trajectories don't line up properly," someone else said. "The gravitational influence on the two smaller planets isn't right for a rogue to have come through either, although it does fit with a single planet suddenly going away."
"A nova wouldn't produce this result either," Kilzen commented, looking back at them before returning to what he was doing. "Leaving aside the fact that the star clearly
didn't go nova, the planet would still be there, just very well done."
"Micro black hole?" Über suggested, watching the display with a sort of worried fascination. "Neutron star core? Antimatter asteroid?"
"No, no, and no, I'm afraid," his friend replied, sighing. "It was a weapon, I'm almost certain of it. We're reading some very strange radiation signatures mixed in with the rubble. But they're not
unique radiation signatures. We've got something very similar on record."
Everyone looked at him, then each other. "From what?" Taylor's dad asked.
"Scion," Leet replied with a sigh.
"Oh. Oh, fuck," her dad said after a long moment of realization.
"Yeah.
That is what would have happened to
us if we hadn't happened to him first," the Tinker remarked, leaning on the console Kilzen was still fiddling with and pointing at the screen. "I'm not quite sure how he did it, but either he did it, or another one of his species did it. About three hundred and eighty years ago. Killed an entire world."
"Multiple worlds," Zex murmured. "Those poor bastards."
Taylor felt a sense of utter fury at the sheer
waste of life, effort, and information the incredibly stupid alien parasites were responsible for. Just in this one example, billions of years of evolution, leading to an intelligent species, gone like that to satisfy some brain dead interstellar plague that was chasing something which didn't even exist.
Someone was going to have to do something about that. Once and for all.
"I'm almost certain it
was Scion," Kilzen announced finally, turning to them. "Based on various debris trajectories, the likely path the instigator of this…
obscenity… took is towards Sol, if one takes stellar drift into account."
"At least we avenged these poor fuckers and all the others," Über said very quietly, making Taylor and the others nod. He sadly saluted the screen. "Sorry, guys. I wish we could have done something."
There was a long silence as they all watched the slow drift of the fragments of a destroyed world, until eventually they turned their attention to scanning the rest of the system.
When they found the thing the parasite had missed, there was considerable surprise, followed by a lot of activity and careful work. Everyone pitched in, of course, and by the time they were heading home, they felt the trip had been well worth the effort despite the finality of their last destination.
Taylor knew they'd be back out here soon enough, but for now, she was looking forward to school, some pizza, less sadness, and the rest of her Hive and friends. Although she certainly felt that overall everything had gone really well.
And they had some cool presents for NASA and their guys. She wondered what they'd say while smirking a little to herself…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Richard Wells, Ph.D. stared at the images on his screen with a sensation of total lightheaded incredulity, wondering if he was dreaming. Clicking the mouse almost robotically he flipped through image after image of things he'd never in his wildest dreams expected to see. He could tell at a glance they were actual
photographs, not computer generated fantasies, despite the fact that this should be impossible.
Especially the one of the Milky Way seen from several tens of thousands of light years away, directly orthogonal to the plane of rotation. It was impossible, but he was looking right at it.
Eventually, having gone through dozens of high resolution images, any one of which would have been the highlight of an entire career to acquire, he became aware that he could hear more than himself breathing. Looking over his shoulder he saw that his office was completely
filled with what was probably the entire staff of the building by this point, every single one of them staring wordlessly at his screen past him. Dimly he recalled he'd rather loudly expressed his surprise when he'd opened the email, and realized that this had attracted attention.
One of his colleagues, Doctor Helen James, another astrophysicist, raised a trembling hand and pointed at his screen. Her mouth worked, a faint hiss of air coming out before she swallowed and tried again. "How?" she said in a raspy voice.
He sighed and shrugged at the same time, turning back to the images. On his second monitor, he opened the email he'd received, which had the link to where the images were stored on a public server. "Apparently the Hive ship took the scenic tour, and was good enough to document…
everything." He almost laughed hysterically before clamping down on his emotions. "And we rather drastically underestimated how fast their superluminal drive is…"
Helen peered at the screen, her face pale. "That says there are over three thousand images here," she said numbly.
"Apparently they like to take photos," he replied helplessly. She giggled, in a way that suggested incipient madness, which he massively sympathized with. "Ten star systems, fully documented. There's spectrographic data, planetary calculations, stellar maps, you name it. I've never seen anything remotely like it."
A commotion in the corridor outside his office, which was stuffed with people trying to peer in the door, made both of them and everyone else present look to see what was going on. "Doctor Wells! Doctor Wells! Move out of the way, you asshole…
Doctor Wells!" The voice of one of the post-grads working at JPL, a young man by the name of Adam Paulson, sounded from outside the room. "Come on, guys, get out of the way!"
Adam sounded frantic, with a note in his voice unlike anything Richard had heard before. He stood, motioning to the others to move. "Clear a path, please," he instructed. With some effort the crowd moved just enough to let Adam, who was holding a large plastic crate over his head, shove his way into the room. He looked around, then put the crate on the floor in lieu of any other accessible surface, before bending over and putting his hands on his knees and breathing hard. Apparently he'd been running, Richard thought.
"Sorry," the young man wheezed after a moment, straightening up. "I had to get this to you immediately."
"What is it?" Wells asked, looking at the crate.
"I don't know," Adam admitted. "But I
do know who delivered it."
Everyone stared at him, waiting for the punchline, as he looked around. "I was walking back from my car and one of the Hive bugs teleported into the car park right in front of me," he said after licking his lips nervously. Richard felt a shock go through him and his gaze snapped to the crate, as did that of everyone else. "It told me this was for you. And said you'd find it interesting. Then it waved at me and vanished." He sounded completely baffled and very shocked at the same time, which wasn't surprising.
Feeling yet again like reality had slapped him in the face with a wet fish out of nowhere, Richard very slowly knelt down next to the box while everyone watched silently. He inspected it closely, then operated the four catches holding the lid on. Removing it, he looked inside the box, stared at the first label he saw and feeling the blood drain from his face, before he dropped the lid and reached for the smaller box the label was attached to. Lifting it to his face he gaped in disbelief.
"Water samples, Alpha Centauri A planet B Moon 3," he read out loud in a voice that was so far past incredulous it required a different word. Next to him, Helen bent down and recovered another box.
"Asteroid sample one, Proxima Centauri primary asteroid belt," she read out, her voice quivering.
Their eyes met, then they, like the rest of the audience, felt their attention drawn towards the crate like a wrench next to an MRI system. There were at least four dozen identical smaller plastic boxes inside the large crate, each with an utterly impossible label on.
After a
long silence, the room absolutely
exploded with noise.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Did you have a good spring break?" Crystal asked her cousins as she closed the door behind her, following the younger girls into the house. Vicky and Amy exchanged glances, and small smiles.
"Yeah, it was fun," Vicky replied. "Lots of things to see, all sorts of neat places to go. I'm glad we went."
"Me too," Amy agreed, her face alight with happiness, something Crystal was pleased to see. The girl had been quite morose far too much in the recent past, but she seemed to have overcome whatever issue she had and was obviously enjoying life now. "I'd do it again, definitely."
"You missed something incredible, though," Crystal said as they sat down, tossing each of her cousins a can of coke and a bag of chips before hitting play on the DVD remote. "An actual spaceship took off from the bay!"
She grinned as they exchanged glances. "A spaceship?" Amy queried.
"Yep. A real, actual spaceship. It was like something out of a movie. The entire fucking
bay lifted into the air somehow, then this massive thing flew out of it, zoomed off out over the ocean, and went straight up. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. You should have seen the look on Mom's face!" She giggled at the memory. "And it came back and vanished into the water again about a day before you came back. Just bad timing, I guess. Maybe you'll see it again if they do the same thing though."
"Who was it?" Vicky asked with a strange note in her voice, sounding like she wasn't sure if Crystal was pulling their legs.
The older girl leaned forward. "It was the Hive!"
"The Hive?" Vicky echoed, that note still there, stronger if everything. "Really?"
"Yeah. Everyone knows it, and they confirmed it on PHO. The Air Force were going nuts about it, and the PRT was… weird." Crystal shrugged, leaning back again as the movie started. "This city is very strange sometimes."
"Yeah, it is," Amy agreed. She looked down at her phone as it buzzed, picking it up and tapping the screen. Crystal noticed her screen background was a really cool image of a galaxy. "Taylor says hi, by the way." She fiddled with the phone then put it down, popping her bag of chips open. "Cool. The Hive has a spaceship. Bet no one saw that coming."
Vicky snorted with laughter, and opened her own bag. Shortly the girls were watching a silly movie and discussing the plot with amusement.
Crystal was sorry that they'd missed the ship, but they'd probably see it again. And at least they'd had fun, which was good.
