Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

“But we don’t have that much storage capacity,” Raphael said, leaning over the control console. “We’ll have to dump the power, or use it to amplify our own command signal.”

“Can’t,” Larry said tersely. “Everything’s at capacity already and there’s no way to dump it except through the Ring of Charon. Put any more power through the Ring and we’ll melt it. And we don’t have any storage capacity left in the gravity containment.”

There was something wrong with the incoming commands, and nothing could be more terrifying to a Caller Ring. It was getting two command signals at once, and neither made any sense. The weaker one advised that increased power was on the way — but if anything, the power transmission was dropping again. The second command signal was loud, blaringly loud and powerful. It took a supreme effort of will to resist blind obedience to it. But its command syntax was garbled slightly, and there was something odd, disturbingly unfamiliar about it—and the orders did not make sense. A stranger’s voice, commanding wrongful acts. The Caller Ring was badly frightened now. What could it be? What was happening? It sent a reply signal to both senders .

The Keeper Ring was stunned. The Caller was clearly receiving an alien signal. Why was the Caller being ordered to cease disassembly of one world? Who or what was ordering it? How was it that the increased power the Keeper sent was not received?

The Keeper Ring upped its output to the Caller Ring again.

“Damn all that’s holy. Son, we’re spiking high,” Raphael said. “The gravity containment is completely saturated. We can’t shunt any more power to it. We have to let the power through to the Lunar Wheel or melt out the Ring.”

“Not yet,” Larry said. “Just a little bit—hold it, signal coming back. Computers working to interpret. Stand by.” Larry stared at the display screen, and his face turned ashen gray. “Oh my God. We’ve failed. The Wheel is saying our command was garbled, and indicates receipt of two command signals. We didn’t jam the Moonpoint signal hard enough.”

“Well, send the Martian shutdown order again,” Raphael said.

Larry shook his head, and punched in a display code.

A highly complex visual image flashed on the main screen, the schematic of the Martian shutdown command. “Not if it contains an error. We can’t just send it again, the Wheel would just refuse it again.” He stared at the schematic, and muttered to himself, trying to read the symbols and codes.

“Can you fix it? Correct the error and send it again?” Simon asked.

Larry shook his head, the sweat popping out on his forehead. “Not in time, not this fast. The damn message is too complicated, and we don’t know the language well enough. And we can’t shunt any more power to our containment, unless you want to recreate the Big Bang right here and now. The Wheel is going to get everything Moonpoint sends—all the power, all the commands—and you can bet the Moonpoint Ring is going to increase its power relay.

“And now they know we’re in the power loop, that there’s an intruder in the system. When the Wheel gets a full power signal from Moonpoint, they’ll find a way to lock us out. Just change the damn frequency, probably. And it’ll all be for nothing.”

He hesitated for a long moment, and turned toward Simon, a desperate look in his eye. “Unless the Lunar Wheel isn’t there anymore.”

There was a pause, a deep beat of time while Simon Raphael looked at Larry, and understood what he was saying.

Simon Raphael felt a hard knot in the pit of his stomach. Fifteen minutes ago he had been rejecting the idea as a disaster, but now it was the only choice left. “Do it,” he said, Now he wished Larry had kept the whole plan to himself. Dr. Simon Raphael did not want this decision thrust upon him. “Do it. Send the order to die.”

Larry decided not to tempt fate by asking for confirmation. He shifted all the power he could draw, called up the signal he had so carefully constructed, and ordered the computer to send it down the wormhole with everything behind it. Not just to the Lunar Wheel—but through the Wheel to the Moonpoint Ring, and through open space, to every Charonian in the Solar System.

The Caller Ring had never known such terror. What was happening? What monstrous enemy was doing these things? Suddenly its whole being twitched to attention, a hugely powerful signal grabbing at it, demanding its entire attention. The feel of the message, the voice, was still that of a stranger, an alien. But this time the command was unmistakable, sent in perfect syntax and modulation.

And it was the one signal that could not be denied, for it worked not through the Caller’s conscious mind, but through the very circuits that formed that mind. The command echoed through the Caller Ring, out on its every command link, to every Worldeater in the system. And rebounded through the Caller Ring itself.

Death.

Stop.

Halt.

Cut power.

Shut down.

Death.

With a strange, cold, fascination, it felt the signal, absorbed it, sensed it coursing through all the myriad links that made up the Caller. It could see the order crashing through all the components of itself .

There was only one hope. It had to set up a stasis storage, set part of itself into hibernation mode before the signal could destroy everything. Any portion of itself that was shut down would not hear the command, and would survive, inert. There was very little time left. Only microseconds at best. Almost at random, the Caller selected a portion of itself near the North Pole region and used every command channel it had to send the stasis order.

But then the signal reached the seat of consciousness itself.

Death.

Death.

Dea—

The Keeper Ring shuddered, convulsed with pain . Death. Death. Death. It fought off the impulse to die, struggled to clamp down its outgoing comm system. If this hideous command echoed out further, out into the Multisystem, the catastrophe would be complete. The Sphere itself might be imperiled. With a last effort of will, it held the command to itself .

And died.

The Sphere realized something was wrong. It switched its full attention back to the new Keeper Ring, milliseconds too late. It caught the last shreds of the death command on an outgoing signal, deftly countermanded it before it could travel outward. None of the Sphere’s other charges would be endangered.

But the Ring was dead, utterly inert. Something had attacked it, and killed it savagely.

Without a Keeper, the Sphere would have to monitor the new world directly, control its orbit personally. A further drain on its resources and attention. No world it had ever taken had caused it so much trouble.

And its new star system! Its hope for a new Multisystem, a refuge against the coming onslaught. Gone. Lost. And with the Link to the new star system shattered, there was no way to know how this thing had happened.

The Sphere realized that new star system was not merely lost—it had been deliberately taken away.

For the first time, the Dyson Sphere realized that it had not one enemy, but two.

And the second enemy knew how to deny it a star system.

But who and what had done this thing? The Sphere set to feverish work, sifting through the wreckage of the dead Keeper Ring’s memory. There had to be clues. There had to be a way to get the Link back.