Today’s prompt was “I Didn’t Know That” (800-word limit). A bit simplistic. Anyway, I had been reading up on a recently discovered neutron star collision and thought it might make an interesting story. I wrote for today’s prompt but had since expanded on the piece, deciding it would make an interesting prolog for a future novel I have tentatively titled “The Gold Standard.” So far, so good. Here for your reading pleasure, I offer the prologue as it currently stands. Have no doubt that it may change even more before it’s finally done.

The following remains a work in progress.

I Didn’t Know That . . .
2772 words | By Me

More than 40 years ago, back in the dark days of CE 2302, a surprisingly conventional war of the worlds had abruptly ended. The United Nations General Assembly had been called into session regarding the discovery of flora — little more than interstellar seed pods — migrating into the Solar System from the Gliese 876 System and eventually settling in the subtropic and temperate zones of Earth’s rural regions. The resultant growth took on the form of a red or orange plant life capable of mobility with a penchant for blood. Bugs and water were adequate for the plants, but what they truly craved was basic H2O mixed with a sprinkling of CO2, O2, and C6H12O6, or water with free oxygen, carbon dioxide, and glucose, the four main ingredients for mammalian blood. Dr. Jacobi Vargus of the World Health Organization had gained global popularity with his statement:

“Coming from a relatively dark planet and with hardly any chlorophyll in their bodies, it is likely Earth’s energy-boosting supplies of natural sugar they find most attractive.”

This new global enemy was simply an un-potted plant, even earning the colloquial term “Wandering Jew.” As with old science-fiction films, these invading plants had the power of locomotion, and they were ravenous hunters for their apparent favorite food.

The UN had declared an internationally agreed-upon global war against these creatures, which seemed easy to destroy, but the pods continued to drop from the sky. It was globally expensive, rapidly outfitting the interstellar assault for an attack on the incoming pod-stream and even as far distant as to the vegetation’s homeworld, estimated to be at least 15 lightyears distant.

Committees were quick to approve the deployed use of a controversial toxin — dioxin — in Operation Herbicide. The overall mission-targets were two gas-giant planets orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 876, a dim, nondescript red dwarf star located in the constellation of Aquarius and virtually invisible to the naked eye of any casual Earth viewer. The assault had been a simple, straightforward strategy to deploy, attack and observe results. In final retaliation, the United Nations Exoplanetary Task Force launched its all-out attack upon the satellites of two planets, one twice Jupiter’s mass and the other about Uranus’s mass. The spaceborne attack on the invader’s cold homeworlds — the six atmosphere moons of gas-giant TAR Alpha Aqar Gliese 876 03 — and later upon the single moon of the smaller sister planet, TAR Bravo Aqar Gliese 876 02.

Witnessing the complete extermination of Earth’s first alien contact were 43,000 battle-hardened rangers, serving nearly 16 lightyears from home. In this confrontation, there could be no alien survivors. Earth leaders had deemed just a single spore from those garden worlds to be an eventual no-win solution. Any supposedly mindless creature capable of interplanetary migration and mortal combat had therefore been deemed unacceptable and needed to be eliminated.

What followed was the destruction of all satellite vegetation and further strikes upon the gas-giants themselves. Still, their arrival upon the Earth had left an eerie sensation with the Earth’s populations. Being capable of interstellar migration laid open the possibility that Gliese 876 might not be the invader’s original home, but rather a way-station from some other, more distant star. There also arose the terrifying prospect that the Milky Way galaxy and even the entire known Universe may be swarming with the seed pods of these blood-lusting monsters.

It had been an odd war, battling oddly-shaped craft of various sizes, all constructed entirely of a living celluloid tissue. Yet, these spacecraft had been well-armed with both fusion and particle weapons systems, with each facility a living entity of the host ship itself, vessels capable of singly holding off and eventually defeating any small Earth task force. One of these ships had eventually been captured, amazing the world with its revolutionary mechanics, becoming an eventual boon for Earth’s future interstellar-craft designs.

For the few hundred creeping vines that had made their way to the ground, they had found the planet Earth to be an overflowing smorgasbord. Able to easily outrun the invading vegetation, there had been few recorded human deaths, but the Black Suites from Langley had been quick to respond. Wearing knee-boots and armed with advanced weaponry no alien ground force could withstand — a garden rake and a match — the wriggling enemy had been hunted down, piled up, and torched to ash.

Be that as it may, this war of the worlds had ended in total victory for the people of Earth, but knowing this had been a warning for enduring vigilance, to be ever watchful of the skies. The following decades led to a detailed investigation of the Solar System and beyond, with robot probes and manned warcraft sweeping interstellar space, searching for any sign of others like these creatures from Gliese 876.

— <><> —

Now 800 lightyears from the sun and at the far side of the zodiacal heavens, just awakening from hypersleep, Hugh Forrest drew in a deep breath of cool air, again thinking of the misdirecting use of the term sleep. The time spent had not been a period of relaxation, and he was now quite exhausted from the ordeal. Hypersleep involved a loose form of suspended animation, during which the human body’s metabolism is not merely slowed but completely halted, and restarting a human heart that had been inactive for nearly a year was a very laborious task.

“Good morning, sir,” Olivia, the ship’s AI interface, cheerfully greeted again, as though he had not heard her the first dozen times.

“Mm-m… Can I just get a minute here…?” he grumbled in reply, awkwardly raising his hands and rubbing his eyes.

“Sir, your presence is requi—”

“I am the ship’s captain, damn it!” he broke in, looking to the computer terminal. “Who the hell requires?”

“Sir, I believe that grumpy old men should not travel so far from home,” she lightly remarked, forcing her captain’s smile.

“Uh-huh, so I’ve been told. Okay, okay…” Forrest folded his hands across his stomach. “Olivia — what’s the problem?”

The terminal clicked. “The apparent motion of anomaly 6AGL PSR J0554+1632 has exceeded expected parameters. Reports from Earthbase Houston suggests FTL travel.”

“Oh. Faster than light? It’s a star, isn’t it? Stars don’t accelerate.”

“Correct, unless anomalized. Overall mass is 1.9 ±0.6 solar masses with a hot x-ray emission. The danger will be the coming proximity.”

“Mm-hm.” Looking thoughtfully to the console audio grid, he raised to sit on the hypersleep bench, swinging his legs around to hang off the side. “Oh… Not good.” The man laid back down, now on his stomach, and gestured toward the computer’s optical array. “Ah… Lumbar, Olivia. Deep.”

“Yes, sir.”

The arm lowered from the hypersleep cover, pressing four padded rollers to his lower spine and slightly rocking into his back.

“Mm-m, yeah… Left a bit — oh, right there… Right there… You said a message from Earth?”

“Yes, sir, transmitted and caught in the wake of our relativity drives.”

“Mm, okay.”

“Sir, the proximity of anomaly 6AGL J0554+1632...”

“Yeah, yeah. Olivia, your anomaly J0554-and-so-forth is by now a physically verified neutron star. Call it that, would ya? It just happens to be a very polite, very quiet neutron star with a softly flickering pulse.”

“Negative.”

“What? Oh, wait. Geminga is J0628 — right?”

“Correct, sir, 2AGL PSR J0628+1737, with an ionizing equatorial gamma-ray pulse emanating in the exahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum.”

“Yeah, right, very gamma but very off-Earth. Thank you for the class,” the captain muttered, feeling the rollers rise away and into storage. With a slight grunt, he sat back up. “Oh — much better, thanks.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

He reached for his hanging flight suit. “Rest of the crew? How’re they doing?”

“All are remaining in hypersleep and stable.”

“Okay, what’s this about? Another pulsar in our vicinity? Odd. What’s the motion? …And what’s it doing here?”

“Moving quite rapidly, sir, refracting against heavy graviton fields in the region and losing velocity at a precipitous rate.”

“Okay. And?”

“A thermal X-ray component of anomaly — the hard pulsar — is expected to cross the port hemisphere of the USS Standard.”

“Port hemisphere — of the bow? When?”

“In approximately…”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly 2 hours, 56 minutes, 13.5 seconds. 12, 11, 10…”

He pulled up the zipper, working now to step into his flight boots. “Mm-hm. Radiation danger?”

“The pulse will be extremely rapid and the radiation minimal due to the ship’s shielding, but the neutron star itself will pass very near to the USS Standard.”

“Well, that’s not right. How near is very near?”

“On the verge of collision, sir. Near enough to draw the vessel into a quickly accelerating, high elliptical orbit, forcing us to cross very near to its north and south electromagnetic jets.”

“Huh.” He stood from the hypersleep bench. “North jet almost doesn’t exist,” he said, reading the terminal’s report.

“That is Geminga.”

The displayed report he had been looking over was quickly replaced with statistics for 6AGL PSR J0554+1632.

“Yes, I see. Not a good place to be.”

“Agreed.”

Fists on his hips, he stretched out his back. “And you couldn’t maneuver around this little glitch without waking me up?”

“Requirements necessitate a command review before…”

He was already nodding his head. “…before actuating helm maneuvers away from recorded anomalous targets,” he balanced. “Have you stated all there is?”

“All that I know of the situation.”

“And how far are we from Geminga?” Opening the companionway access hatch, the captain dove headlong from the centripetal command wheel, out into the weightless neck of the 60-year-old battleship, the practiced maneuver speeding him along toward the bridge.

“Geminga: pulsar, 2AGL PSR J0628+1737.” Olivia’s calm voice followed along on his 30-meter trajectory. “2AGL J0628+1737 is—”

“Hey, hey, hey. Geminga, okay?”

“Yes, sir. Geminga is now directly ahead of the USS Standard at approximately 950 million kilometers. We are above the quiet northern hemisphere and measuring its surprisingly weak jet flow. Local standard of rest vectors as follows: U equals 11.1 kilometers per second, V equals 12.24 kilometers per second, and W equals 7.25 kilometers per second.”

Catching the hatchway to the bridge, he sighed his acceptance of the data. “All of which matches our target’s galactic velocity,” he noted, opening the compartment. “So, we have arrived at destination and are in orbit.”

“Holding. Orbit will be tomorrow. Overall velocity has been set to 286 kilometers per second. I was in the process of awakening you for your end-of-flight briefing when the Houston communique alerted of 6AGL PSR J0554+1632’s already perceived approach, so…”

“Yeah, guess I was gettin’ up anyway.” He gripped the back of the command chair and pushed himself toward the ship’s helm, looking toward the filtered portal just ahead. “Ya know, Geminga’s supposed to be all alone out here.”

“That is correct. However, 6AGL J0554+1632 was not alone in its region, experiencing — anomalous — gravitational influences from its proximity to other recently discovered SNRs, those being…”

“SNRs?”

“Supernova remnants.”

“Right”

“The other recently discovered SNRs include 6AGL PSR J0617+6439, and the rapidly orbiting — anomalies — of 6AGL PSR J0617+6503 and 6AGL PSR J0617+6504.”

“Recently? Four new neutron stars just like that — almost side-by-side?”

“Affirmative. Recent due to electromagnetic — anomalies — of the Medusa Nebula.”

“Yeah, I get it, okay? Anomalies do occur — but the Medusa? She’s so quiet — and another 700 lightyears out.”

“Affirmative. It is Apparent that 6AGL J0554+1632 was launched in a highly accelerated trajectory 800 years ago, local to our current position, due to its close flyby of anomalies 6AGL J0617+6439, 6AGL J0617+6503, and 6AGL J0617+6504. With a shift in stellar axes due to the increased velocities, the newer neutron stars’ pulse emanations became perceptible to Earth. More markedly so once all four became more clearly visible after breaking through the nebula’s electron shroud, all of which occurred three weeks after we departed the Solar System, at c-plus, radio-dark, and en route to Geminga.”

“Yeah, c-plus. That’s quite a marksman shot — 700 lightyears to here, and just as we arrived. And Earth’s report of this minor fact only just caught up to us when we stopped.”

“As stated.”

“Okay, new ground. We’ll need to back off, see what happens.” He regarded the filtered pulsar in the forward viewport. “Need someone out there to get to work on a subspace radio of some kind,” he mumbled.

“Stanford University was researching FTL communications…”

“Olivia, stay on-topic. What are the odds that Geminga picks up our visitor as an orbiting partner — which would no doubt throw this whole mess into some new trajectory?”

“Yes, an excellent possibility.”

“Yeah. How close will J0554-and-so-forth get to Geminga?”

“6AGL PSR J0554+1632. Not yet calculated, sir. Hold.”

“Yeah, w’ll — hurry up.”

“Yes, sir. Close estimation shows that 6AGL J0554+1632 will impact Geminga.”

“Impact?”

“Affirm—”

“You’re talkin’ about another supernova event!”

“Yes, sir. 6AGL J0554+1632 will come into tight, rapid orbit of Geminga. Estimations should be expressed as an orbit every few seconds and accelerating. It is further estimated…”

“Olivia… This ship can’t survive any of that. Hell, we’re almost at ground zero!”

“Working…”

“Yeah, working! I need all thrusters, and I need ’em like last week!”

“Engines coming online, sir. The star’s eventual impact threat is now calculated and verified. Expect orbit to commence in — 18 minutes.”

“Right. Get me Mr. Owens and Mr. Geer. I need ’em up, awake, briefed, and with me, ASAP!”

“Yes, sir. Awakening First Officer Derrek Owens and Science Office Rodney Geer at this time.”

“Spin the relativity drives back up.” He watched the indicating RPMs roll to a blur of motion. “Rodney,” he quietly mused aloud, strapping himself into his command chair and going over the received data charts. “When awakened, that man should be yellow-tagged ‘approach with caution.’ ”

“Agreed, sir.”

“Okay, get ’em up, then alert the rest of my crew. This is not a drill. I need all one-fifty of ’em up, alert, and at battle stations in 15 mikes.”

“Yes, sir. The crew is awakening.”

“Shift us around a bit. Get us a clear vector for open space.”

“Repositioning USS Standard for departure.”

“How many engines have I got?”

“The three mains are up and ready. Auxiliaries are still spinning up.”

“Radio Earth with our sit-rep. Warn the crew of imminent launch and go autonomous in two minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Autonomous departure.”

“Take us out at full throttle. We may all lose consciousness, but we gotta git.”

“Understood.”

The captain panned the dark skies ahead to the strobing flash of the rapidly approaching pulsar as it passed under the bow, already caught in a tightening parabolic curve. As the approaching star dropped from view, he panned around toward the far distant, imperceivable Solar System and shook his head.

“Just a complete mess…”

“Departure in 30 seconds, Captain.”

“Right.” He looked at the console. “Olivia. How long have I been awake?”

“Sir, I awakened you 23 minutes, 44 seconds…”

“Shoulda got me up sooner, kid.”

“Yes, sir. Departure in 10 seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, now departing.”

The man was immediately pressed into his chair, feeling the acceleration in every part of his body. It was an eight-G thrust, threatening to black him out. There was a flash as the military craft passed through the star’s weak, rapidly rotating pulse.

“The hell’s that?” he shouted.

“Analysis is…”

“What is it, Olivia?” he repeated, feeling the ship maneuver away from an impossibly brilliant shine at the pulsar’s southern hemisphere.

“It would appear — the southern region of Geminga, the side facing away from the Solar System, has been ruptured and is largely … absent. A large percentage of surface material is missing, and the star is dumping high gamma radiation to open space. Alert, sir. We are rapidly approaching 6AGL PSR J0554+1632. Applying delta, approximating stellar balance between the stars.”

“Damnation!” he growled, the sensation of the following maneuver pressing him heavily to the opposite arm of his chair.

Olivia took the USS Standard hard about, driving below the careening, newly arrived neutron star and veering hard from its threatening gravitational tug, heading now back toward the hot gamma ejecta from Geminga’s missing lower region. It was at this point that Olivia lost control of the USS Standard, as the vessel was immediately caught in that star’s immense gravitational field and pulled through the very edge of the colossal jet. Now locked into the polar orbit at a bare 225 million kilometers distance, there was nothing anyone could do. In the minutes that followed, the newer, smaller pulsar was taken into the magnetic embrace of ancient, mighty Geminga, irreversibly gripped in its gravitational pull as well. Within barely 10,000 rapidly accelerating orbits to near the speed of light, the two stars spun around each other in a dance that soon erupted, expelling massive volumes of radiation and debris in all directions. A brilliantly colored, swiftly expanding, glittering nebula spread through the heavens, a cloud containing nanoparticles of actinium, aluminum, americium, barium, berkelium, beryllium, bismuth, bohrium, cadmium, calcium, californium, cerium, cesium, and all the metals the Universe had ever known, and even many never heard of before. In a blistering explosion of unparalleled brilliance, the two surfaces found eventual, grating contact, creating a second massive explosion of compressed stellar matter, with the birth of a week-long supernova illuminating far-off Earth in a shine brighter than that of a full moon.

Now thoroughly irradiated and relatively dead, the heavily armored USS Standard, blown from her tight orbit to tumble outward with the expansion of stellar debris, was locked in a new circular orbit at near to its original distance of one billion kilometers, far from the sudden darkness of the newly combined stars but still well within that mini-black hole’s lethal death-zone. Keeping the engines firing, Olivia tried valiantly to pull the USS Standard to comparative safety until, one-by-one, the rumbling engines quieted and died.

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