anything, the Nanos and the Macros themselves. I suspected there was a race which I called the Blues who were at the bottom of some of these mysteries, but I no longer believed they were responsible for all of them.
I watched the screen as the sensor data came in. All of us watched, hardly breathing. We’d embedded a sensor array in the outer hull of the invasion ship some weeks ago and were able to gather a considerable amount of info from its passive systems. The Macros either hadn’t noticed the garbage can-sized sensor array, or they hadn’t cared to remove it. We were very glad for this small allowance. The only thing worse than heading into an unknown, hostile system, was doing it blind.
“No mines sir-at least, not yet,” Major Sarin said.
We all breathed more deeply, feeling fractionally relieved. Instant doom was not at hand.
The screen blanked then. The data coming in from the Helios system had ceased, so it had to redraw and project the environment it was now sensing outside the invasion ship. The star came up first, unsurprisingly. As the source of energy with the greatest output, it was the easiest thing to plot. It was fairly distant, by the look of things. Either that, or the star was smaller than most.
When the brainboxes chose a color for it, I was relieved to see a bright, yellow sphere. At least it wasn’t a radiation-blasting white or blue star, nor was it a dark neutron ball that might threaten to crush us.
“Looks like a solo star,” Major Sarin said.
“Navigator, do we have a range yet?” I asked.
“Triangulation not yet possible,” Gorski said. “We haven’t moved far enough from our initial position. But judging by gravitational pull and brightness, the star projected on the map should be an accurate depiction. It is a G-class-a yellow-white star, like our own Sol. I would say it is fractionally smaller and younger, but other than that, very similar. The system seems to be a single-star system.”
“Do we have confirmation on that?” I asked. Most star systems were not like our own Solar System. Most in the galaxy were binary or triple-star systems. Some systems revolved in a storm of stellar objects, tight clusters with many stars tugging at one another in close proximity. Such systems were inherently dangerous, due to increase radiation and gravitational effects.
“Unless there is some dink star out there past our initial scan,” said Gorski, “then we are pretty certain.”
“Okay, so far so good. Where are the damned planets?”
“Maybe there aren’t any planets,” said Sandra. “The Macros said we were going to fight satellite structures.”
“Unlikely,” I said. “Whoever built these satellites would have had to have something to build them with.”
Even as I said it, a gas giant popped up on the screen. It wasn’t too far off, either. It was pretty far out from the single star, but not as far out as Jupiter. Eyeballing it, I would say it was about where our asteroid belt orbited back home. “There’s the first one,” I said.
“Oh, that’s a good sign,” Sandra said.
We all looked at her. “I’ve been reading about star system structures,” she said. “We don’t know everything yet, but a gas giant tends to suck in debris and makes the inner planets more habitable.”
I nodded, pursing my lips. “It’s a theory,” I said. “But you are right, as far as we know that is the mechanism. I’m glad to hear you have taken an interest in astronomy.”
Sandra smiled. “What choice do I have out here?”
“While we are on the topic, let’s see if we can figure out where here is,” I said, knowing it was best to keep a waiting crew very busy. “As I recall, Gorski, you plotted our last star system’s position based on stellar mass and volatility.”
“Right sir, the nearest match for the red giant we found was Aldebaran-it’s close to Earth, about sixty-five lightyears out. The star lines up with the belt of Orion.”
“Isn’t that more of an orange giant?” I asked.
“Right sir, but it fits the spectral signature of the Helios star.”
I nodded. “I find that interesting, as the Blue Giant I visited once was most likely Bellatrix-the left shoulder of Orion. Let’s review: we have a known chain of five star systems. The first link on the chain is the blue giant Bellatrix-at least we think it was Bellatrix. Only Sandra and I were out there and we spent the whole time running around avoiding the Macros, not taking careful measurements. Anyway, subsequent analysis of the video we brought back places the star in that region, around the constellation of Orion.”
Everyone nodded and worked their instruments. No one looked terrified. No one looked as if they were going to barf on my screen. I kept talking, and they stayed focused and calm while data poured into their computers concerning the new star system we’d just discovered.
“The second star on the known chain of systems is Sol, our home star,” I continued. “Third was Alpha Centauri-very close to Earth. The fourth was the red giant where we fought the Worms on Helios. This is the fifth system we’ve mapped. It appears to be G-class. A yellow, cheery, solo star. Perfect for warm-water planets and life. What is the stellar mass, Gorski?”
“About ninety-one percent that of Sol, sir,” he said. “Interesting new detail coming in: the star is metal-rich according to spectral analysis.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“A higher likelihood of rocky planets.”
I nodded thoughtfully. If we were on a colonizing mission, this would be an excellent place to start. None of the other systems I’d visited thus far had been inviting places for humans to live.
“Sir, more bodies are being plotted now-a lot of them,” Gorski said.
We watched quietly as planets appeared magically on the big screen. There were indeed a lot of them, and no less than six were in what we projected to be the habitable zone. Two of these were twins, both about the size of Mars. They orbited one another in a tight, tidally-locked dance. It was as if each was the moon of the other.
Such a lovely system. There had to be habitable planets here. It was a colonization mission commander’s dream.
“Life signs?” I asked quietly.
“None yet, but we have six in the zone for liquid water, and a grand total now of twenty-one bodies, not counting moons.”
Twenty-one worlds. My mind could hardly grasp it. Our eight planets-plus Pluto-seemed paltry in comparison. Eleven of these were out past the gas giant, frozen iceballs it was certain. There was a handful in too close as well, blasted worlds that must look like Mercury. But it was those six worlds in the cradle, nestled between a gas giant and their steady, warm sun, which kept drawing my eye.
I looked around my crew and saw that all of them were feeling a sense of wonder. We had discovered what might turn out to be a treasure-trove of habitable planets.
“I wish this was a friendly, exploratory mission of peace,” Sandra said.
We all looked at her, and we all wished the same thing. But we had come here to fight-and we didn’t even know who we were up against yet.
“Something I don’t get,” I said aloud. “There are six living worlds, and yet the Macros said we are going after people on satellites. What’s wrong with the planets? Have we spotted any of these stationary structures yet?”
“No sir. They are too small to detect yet. They wouldn’t have much gravitational tug, less than a moon. They probably aren’t emitting too much radiation, either.”
“Try radio waves. Are we picking up any com traffic?”
Sandra jumped a little and worked at her board. “Oops,” she said.
I looked at her with a flat stare. She made tapping adjustments on her screen. Suddenly, the big screen lit up with contacts.
“I think I had it set for known contacts and signals only,” Sandra said. “It was just showing our two Macro ships.” She turned back to the big screen. Then she shut up and joined all of us in jaw-dropping shock.
The screen swam with hundreds of contacts. There were ships around every planet, or satellites of some kind. Dozens of contacts roved the surfaces of all six of the central planets and a few on the icy worlds as well.
