Red Star (The Triple Stars, Volume 2)

For all those who fight the power


Table of Contents
Prologue - The Magellanic Heresies
Diurnal
The Moving Stars
Low-orbit Turbulence
The Dust of Shattered Worlds
Aetheral
The Teeming Death
Alien Megastructures
The Neverkey
Sigma Counterspin
Millennial
Evils
Communication
Radiance
Contamination
Eb
Void Wraiths
The Periarch
Fenwinter
Detonation
Convocation
Epochal
Aevus
The Seer Stone
Ansider
Labyrinthine
The Fight at the Red Star
Toruk


Prologue - The Magellanic Heresies
Fragments recovered from the journal of Senjen Vorst, planetologist of the deep space exploratory vessel Magellanic Cloud, as reassembled and translated by Ondo Ynwa Lagan from discoveries made on the (now extinct) planet Maes Far.
Warning: These fragments form part of the Magellanic Heresies as proscribed by Concordance. Ownership or propagation of these documents is considered an act of extreme heresy against Omn. Read or distribute at your own risk.
…the three stellar masses meant that we were forced to translate from metaspace at a much greater distance from the centre of the system than normal. Frustrating! It will take many weeks to reach the planet. Telemetry is, however, slowly giving us a more complete picture of the stars and their single world…
…we now observe small degrees of orbital perturbation in the movements of the three suns. Frankly, it's a relief. The wilder theories of some of the crew can now be discounted; these are not artificially engineered stars, as if such things were even possible. Their motions are remarkably regular, but that appears to be a natural phenomenon, the chance arrangement of gravitational influences holding them in their patterns of movement about each other. Eventually, as they lose mass through normal stellar radiation, this regularity will fail, and it is conceivable that two or even three of the stars will collide or fuse…
…so much for the suns, but what of the planet and its moons? Some on the ship are convinced significant terraforming has taken place on this world, but they are unable to explain how that could be achieved – or why anyone would go to such lengths. The number of viable planets in the galaxy far outweighs the number of cultures requiring relocation or room for expansion, and this must always have been the case. This planet, especially, with no land masses upon it, is hardly a good candidate for occupation…
…a strange conversation with one of the chemists on board, Dragonel Vulpis. He wanted me to support his view that the planet is anomalous, unnatural in some way. He actually used the term supernatural. He more or less pinned me to the bulkhead as he spoke, his eyes wide, unblinking. The man used to amuse me, but he becomes more and more alarming. Something has broken inside his brain. I explained that the apparent regularity of the planetary and lunar motions is an illusion caused by our lack of time perspective; that the orbital patterns are in constant flux, and we've simply arrived at a galactic moment when everything appears to be in clockwork equilibrium. We don't live long enough to see the pattern.
He wouldn't have it and grew angry. I must talk to the officers about him before he causes more trouble; the long voyage appears to have taken a psychological toll upon him. A single, disturbed crew-member can have a hugely destructive effect upon a ship…


Three hours after Selene and Ondo's arrival at the dead star…


Part 1 - Diurnal
1. The Moving Stars
The clock embedded in the biomechanical hemisphere of Selene Ada's brain whispered the countdown to her death.
Oxygen supply 2.5% - 13 minutes remaining
Strange how the responses in the two halves of her body had become merged, indistinguishable. The agonies in her oxygen-starved natural tissues, the urgent override alerts in her artificial: they had become indistinguishable. She smiled to herself at the irony of it. She had made such good progress.
She sat with her back against the column of the archway upon the fragment of planetary rock. The nearby dead star, barely three kilometres across, bathed them in its hard gamma rays. Ondo lay beside her, his body ricked awkwardly where he'd slumped among the scattered rocks. His features were indistinct through his suit visor, but it was long minutes since he'd moved. She instructed his helmet lights to come on for a moment. He didn't respond, no flicker in his eyes. His heart rate continued to fall steadily, and the blue tinge to his lips was unmistakable.
She queried the flecks embedded in his cerebellum one more time. There was only the faintest flutter of life within his body. Oxygen levels within his bloodstream were critical, and hypoxia was causing tissue damage at an increasing rate. Even if, by some miracle, they found a way out, he wouldn't make it alive; his brain cells were already too impaired. She could rouse him, instruct his control flecks to amp up his metabolism enough to return him to consciousness, but she let him be. Best to leave him in the peace of oblivion. Soon he'd die, and then the only version of him left in the universe would be the engram copy she carried within her own head. And then, when she finally succumbed, they'd both be gone in the same moment.
Was this what it had been like for the original inhabitants of this planet? Had they known the end was coming for them, too, and that there was nothing they could do? A last few moments to hold loved ones, stare into the sky, bury themselves in some hedonistic oblivion?
It struck her how lost she would feel at Ondo's demise. With him gone, she'd be more alone than she'd ever been. Once, during her rescue from Maes Far and her reconstruction, she'd genuinely hated and feared him, blaming him for the pain she was suffering, for prolonging her agonies, for taking away everything she'd loved. She hadn't always been rational. People lashed out when they were wounded.
Later, she'd grown to