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Decades ago, a star called Proxima Centauri underwent a cataclysmic magnetic
shift, which created a coronal mass ejection that decimated the orbiting
planet of Proxima Doma. Proxima Doma was tidally locked, which meant one
side always faced the sun, and one side always faced away. Only a narrow
band was ever habitable, but as it turned out, not for long. What
researchers now believed was that this event was the culmination of a
centuries-long cycle. Over time, the habitable zone along the terminator
line will stabilize, and become survivable once more. It had already begun
to do that. There was still no atmosphere, so it required intelligent
intervention, and for some, this was enough, but not for most. They wanted
something permanently safe.
While the cycle was meaningfully long for a baseline human, it was a flash
in the pan for an immortal, and unsustainable for a community. Why put down
roots when you knew they were going to be destroyed eventually? People died
in that tragedy. Many stayed in the poles, which were the only permanently
safe regions, but this made space commutes unreasonably costly. So the
majority of the survivors left.
They went all over the stellar neighborhood, but the primary destination was
the Gatewood Collective. Gatewood was a materials depot, which was
designated to provide colonists with the resources they needed to go
wherever their final destination was. No one was meant to live there who
didn’t work as the managers of the depot. One faction from Proxima Doma
wasn’t happy with that. They wanted to stay, so they tried to lay claim to
one of the extremely inhospitable planets. These were more stable and
consistent than Doma, but still harsh. And anyway, they were about to be
annihilated.
After some political turmoil, the captain of a transport vessel agreed to
relocate these holdouts to another planet. They wanted one to call
their own, but if they didn’t want to die, they would compromise for
their own secluded region of a preexisting colony. This one orbited Tau
Ceti, and was called Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It wasn’t the only planet in
the system, but it was the only habitable one, and that was thanks to a
particularly uninhabited world called Qishra.
Sugar Delgado stood on the bridge of her ship with the Axiom of Astronomy,
Liselot Olteanu. They were regarding a terrible sight through the
viewscreen. “Magnify more,” Sugar instructs the computer.
That was definitely a moon, and it was definitely far too close to the
planet.
“Not to blame or criticize,” Sugar went on, “but you didn’t see it coming?”
“Qishra orbits the star slowly, and the moon is moving fast. For the
majority of the time, the moon was behind the planet. Even if we had
seen it coming, there still isn’t anything we could have done about it. Some
researchers think that it’ll be a near-miss.”
“You don’t,” Sugar stated.
Liselot held both of her fists up and presented a crude demonstration. “If
Qisha were the eightball, and the moon was the cueball, yes, the geometry
says it would miss.”
Sugar nodded. “But the Roche limit.”
“The Roche limit,” Liselot echoed. “You have to account for the gravity. The
two bodies are being drawn together, and they will crash into each
other. Now, it’s not a Theia event, but it will be enough to cause chaos. We
can’t model what will happen to the planet once the rogue moon strikes. The
most widely accepted model has the majority of the moon being ejected from
the system while Qishra begins to form a ring.”
“But it won’t stop there,” Sugar deduced.
“The collision will add mass to the planet, which will only help it do its
job to protect us, but over time, the chaos will increase, and it could
start to shoot us.”
“But you don’t know.” Sugar wasn’t arguing, Not knowing was the scary part,
because, given their technology, there was nothing they could do to protect
themselves besides leave. And that will be logistically difficult, even if
the first impact took months.
This world was a haven for those who wanted to live on a planet, but still
wanted the simple, isolated life. There was only one city, mainly for coming
and going. Nearly everyone lived in villages or homesteads. Some areas had
such perfect weather that they didn’t even have permanent structures. A
nomad might walk around with their tech and a tent, and that was it. People
moved here because they liked to be alone with nature.
“No, we don’t know. It could take years, or it could take decades, but
either way, I would not want to live here if I were a Domanian refugee,”
Liselot reasoned.
Sugar shook her head. “You don’t know these people. They were fully
cognizant that their new planet, Doma Tertia, was going to
intentionally be destroyed, but they refused to leave. We only finally got
them off of it because they are fiercely loyal to their leader, so we only
had to convince him to stop being stubborn and stupid.”
“Then tell him to tell the others to get right back on your ship and leave
here too.”
Sugar sighed. “He’s not here. He persuaded them to leave, but had somewhere
else to go. Now they can only operate on his most recent orders. It’s
bizarre.”
“For a group of isolationists, they sure are dependent,” Liselot pointed
out. “Sorry to be blunt about that.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t like them, I just got stuck with them,” Sugar
explained.
“Some Bidans have packed up and left because of this threat,” Liselot added.
“I mean, our population was already dwindling because people want to check
out Castlebourne, or because they’re choosing Varkas Reflex over VR around
nature. Some, however, report being afraid of Armageddon. It’s my job to
give them the facts, and the fact is that we don’t have enough information
yet, and once we do, it may be too late.”
“You called it a rogue moon,” Sugar pointed out. “Which planet is it from?”
Liselot smiled. She was actually rather excited about this. “We think it’s
from Qishra. We think the planet ejected it millions of years ago, and it’s
been rogue ever since, wandering the outer system this whole time. Which
means it’s—”
“Coming home,” they said simultaneously. Then they were silent for a moment.
“I hope you weren’t thinking that we could help with evacuation efforts,”
Sugar said, breaking the ice. This was a transport vessel, but it didn’t
have unlimited capacity. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. With enough power,
they could expand inward into pocket dimensions. But it could still not
support the whole population of this planet, and none of them was authorized
to know about that kind of tech in the first place.
“No,” Liselot assured her. “We may prefer nature, but the reason the city
exists, and why my job exists, is because we understand that the
universe is a dangerous place. Most who do want to leave are transferring
their consciousnesses through the quantum network. We’re building deep
underground shelters for those who want to stay, and constructing exodus
ships for those who wanna leave in their own bodies with their own
possessions. What we were hoping was that you could prevent the chaotic
ejections that will follow. New ring systems are violent and unpredictable.
With your weapons—”
“I don’t have any weapons,” Sugar argued.
“Forgive me, captain,” Liselot said. “Our sensors clearly indicate one.”
Sugar painted a puzzled look on her face. “Oh, that’s a hot pocket purge.”
“I’m sorry?” Now Liselot was the one who was confused.
“It’s a stealth feature,” Sugar began to explain. “You store your waste heat
in a special contained environment, then you can purge it all at once when
you’re, say, on the other side of a star, or something. You’re practically
invisible in between purges.”
“That sounds like it could be used as a weapon,” Liselot contended.
“Yeah, but not for what you’re asking,” Sugar insisted. “It’s not anywhere
near as powerful as the kind of nuclear bombs you would require. It can’t
hold enough energy to accomplish that. I’m sorry. If I had realized your
intentions, I wouldn’t have wasted—”
“No, it’s my fault. I listened to what my experts said they detected on your
ship.” Liselot frowns and breathes through her nose. “Thank you. I’ll leave
now.”
“Hold on,” Sugar said. “It will take months for the ring to form and become
a real threat. Just because I don’t have what you need, doesn’t mean I can’t
build it. At the very least, you need to construct orbital defense platforms
with ablation lasers. Earth has been using those for centuries, and it’s
worked out for them.”
“Earth has never faced the kind of onslaught we could have on our hands,”
Liselot said. “Jupiter has always been stronger than Qishra. That’s why
intelligent life was able to evolve on it in the first place. And their
monitoring infrastructure is leagues beyond ours simply by its age. We knew
what we were getting into when we colonized. Tau Ceti is a volatile system.
This should come as no surprise. We were foolish.”
“Still,” Sugar urged, “you need ablation lasers, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I just don’t know that we have time.”
Sugar smirked. “Well...we store time in the stern.”
“Huh?” Liselot questioned.
Sugar had already said too much. “I have the design for an excellent defense
platform in my privilege vault. It’s got a lot of bells and whistles that
you don’t need right now, so I’ll take a day to modify it. All I’ll need are
the raw materials.”
Liselot held a minute to think about it. “We’ll accept anything we can get.”
“Great.” Sugar tapped behind her ear. “Van. Come to the bridge please.”
Van teleported there instantly.
“Whoa. How did you do that?” Liselot asked him.
“Uh, he’s only a hologram,” Sugar lied. “Van, I need you to be able to make
physical contact, so please turn off your imager and come back in person.”
“Sorry, boss,” Vantu apologized.
“I could have sworn that I could feel his physical presence,” Liselot
claimed. “Maybe even the warmth of his core.”
“Magnets!” Sugar joked.
Liselot breathed deeply and looked back over at the impending collision.
“You really think we can do this? I know we don’t have to worry about
something happening tomorrow, but we’re intentionally obsolete. We should
have made the city bigger.”
Sugar watched the event too. “I can do this. Trust me, it’s no big deal.”
It was a big deal. The moon itself was nothing, but it turned out to
be hiding something much, much worse. No laser could stop a black
hole.
