Stephen Baxter - Starfall

Stephen Baxter

Starfall

Between Sol and Alpha Centauri

Minya and Huul stood together on the comet's observation deck, in freefall, gently embraced by smart webbing. Beneath their feet lay the bulk of the comet nucleus, a fifty-kilometres-deep frozen ocean of dirty water ice. Above their heads was the fine carapace of the observation blister, and above that nothing but stars, a field of jewels.

Huul drank in the view, for he knew he had only moments left to enjoy it. Already the bots were working at the fringe of the window, coating it over with an authentic-looking layer of comet frost. When the blister was covered altogether it would be dismantled, this outer level of decking collapsed, and the human crew confined to a huddle of chilly chambers deep in the comet's heart

And Huul's son, yet unborn, would never see the stars at all—not until he was older than Huul was now. Huul, with a spasm of regret, put his hand on his wife's belly, trying to feel the warmth of the baby within.

Minya knew what he was thinking. She was tougher than he was, but more empathetic too. "I know," she said. "We are sacrificing a great deal—and we are imposing that sacrifice on our son. But his son will thank us."

Huul grunted. "Perhaps. But he might be the one doing the fighting, by the time we get to Sol."

"I know, I know. Let's just enjoy the view, while it lasts."

He gazed out at the stars. "Isn't it strange to think that whether you live in Alpha system or Sol system, the stars you see are much the same? We have that much in common at least."

"True. With a couple of exceptions." And she pointed back the way they had come, back to Alpha Centauri, which even from this immense distance showed as a clear double sun.

And when Huul looked the other way he saw a compact constellation. From Earth it was a W shape, known as Cassiopeia, one of the most easily recognisable of the star figures—but from Alpha, and from here, there was an extra star to the left of the pattern, turning the constellation into a crude scribble. That star was Sol, bright but not exceptionally so, the first star of mankind.

"It doesn't look much, does it?" Minya murmured. "Just a lantern in the sky. But that is the seat of the Shiras, the source of all our trouble."

"And that," said Huul with mordant humour, "is where you and I will die."

"You mustn't talk like that," Minya snapped. "The Starfall project is already magnificent, Huul. Magnificent!"

She was right, Huul knew. The starborn's rebellion against Earth had already been decades in the planning. The supplying of this comet-ship by lightsail out of Alpha, about as covert an operation as could be mounted on such a scale, had alone taken decades. And now the comet had been nudged onto a path that would take it sailing into Sol system in less than five decades, a trajectory intended to make it appear that this was just another long-period comet making an entirely natural visit to its parent star. But a crew of saboteurs would be huddled in its icy heart, locked into a tightly closed miniature ecology, not allowing as much as a stray erg of heat to leak to space to betray their presence.

Minya said, "The earthworms won't know we're among them until we're bright in the skies of Earth. And then we'll see what's what. Remember, Huul. We will be the Second Wave of the Starfall assault, second only to the smart plague. When we have helped cut away the tyranny of the Shiras at the root, to us will accrue much glory—and to our descendants for all time, as far as mankind journeys in time and space."

But the labouring bots were almost done in frosting over the observation dome. And, Huul thought, I may die without ever seeing another star.

Minya tugged at his hand. "Come on. We've work to do."

Tau Ceti

The flitter from the Facula arrowed towards the centre of the daylit face of the planet. Tau Ceti II was a small, warm, watery world, all but drowned by a vast ocean, and habitually swathed in cloud—and now, according to imperial intelligence, host to an unauthorised human colony.

"There's definitely something wrong," Pella said.

Stillich turned to his First Officer. Pella sat crammed in with the assault squad in the translucent hull of this intrasystem flitter. She was peering obsessively at a diorama of their target. Stillich glanced around at his marines, sitting in their smartsuits, the sunburst sigil of the Empire of Sol on their breasts. He got grins back, but he could sense their nervousness, and Pella's fretting wasn't helping.

The journey out from Sol had been over five years subjective, more than thirteen objective. This was Stillich's first interstellar jaunt under his own command, and he understood that his primary task during the cruise out had been to keep his crew interested, with a training programme half a decade long intended to sharpen them for this very moment, the planetfall. Stillich, in fact, had already started to turn his attention to the return journey, when another five-year programme would prepare the crew for the culture shock of their return.

To Stillich the journey itself had been the principal challenge. He had not expected the mission itself, the subduing of a ragged bunch of second-hand colonists from Alpha, to present any problems. But now here was Pella with her analyses, mucking up morale, right at the climax of the mission.

He murmured to her, "There's no evidence of any threat to us from these ragged-arsed colonists, Number One."

Pella was bright, but she was young, at thirty a decade or so younger than Stillich. And she had a strong, prickly sense of herself. "No, sir. But what we're seeing doesn't make sense. The colony looks wrong. Half-dismantled, rebuilt. Look." She showed him hastily processed drone images of circular landforms, evidence of abandoned structures. "There can't be more than a few thousand people on the planet. Why would you move?"

Stillich shrugged. "Weather. Seismic problems. There's any number of reasons why you might get your first location wrong—"

"These are interstellar colonists, Captain. They're unlikely to be so foolish. I'd be happier if we were going into this situation better informed."

So would I, Stillich thought, but he wasn't about to say so before his troops. He forced a grin. "We're just going to have to have our wits about us when we land. Right, lads?"

He was rewarded with a muted cheer. "You said it, skip."

A gong's low chime, the call to prayer, filled the cabin of the little flitter. The men had their solar amulets fixed outside their suits to their wrists, and they consulted these now, shifting in their seats so they could face towards Sol. Soon the murmured prayers began.

Stillich turned too. He knew where Sol was, actually; he could find it from the constellations, distorted by this translation to Tau Ceti. But nearly twelve light years from Earth it was tricky to pick out the home star. That, of course, was proclaimed by the Shiras as the natural limit to the human dominion—the Empire of Sol was to be that bubble of space close enough that you could see the home star with the naked eye, and so be able to pray to its munificence.

But Stillich knew that the Shiras' control depended on more practical considerations.

The Facula was a GUTdrive starship. 'GUT' stood for 'Grand Unified Theory'. The ship was essentially a plasma rocket, its exhaust propelled by a phase-transition energy that had once driven the expansion of the universe itself. After a thousand years this was still the peak of mankind's interstellar technology. But the Facula was a sublight ship. And a human navy forever contained by lightspeed had a certain natural reach.