The Dead Sun(Star Force Series #9)

-45-



Upon returning to Earth, I received less than a hero’s welcome. The headlines on every news site blared, painting me as a butcher of innocents. I was depicted in cartoons kicking around fluffy clouds while wearing a steel suit and a vicious grin. Such were the joys of a free press.

Deciding it was time to go before the people, I summoned Parliament. I ordered them all to return to their huge, spherical chamber. They had been on vacation—it seemed to me they were almost always on vacation—and they didn’t really want to come back to town.

But when I called, they all came. Even those who were ill made an appearance. They were too afraid not to come. If there had been one obvious side effect of my recent actions, it was evident in the quick obedience of the rank and file members of my government.

I put on my monkey-suit. It only seemed fitting. Jasmine, swollen with child now, stood in the wings as she had before. She fussed with my saber and seemed more worried about my hair than what I was thinking. But when it was almost time for me to mount the stage, her curiosity got the better of her.

“What are you going to say, Kyle?” she asked, her hands lingering on my stylish, looping lapels.

Her eyes searched mine. I smiled back.

“What has to be said,” I told her.

Her eyes widened.

“Don’t do it,” she said suddenly.

I’d told no one of my plans. She’d figured them out all on her own. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by her intuition—but I was.

“Everything will be fine,” I told her.

“You always say that.”

“And everything turns out good in the end, doesn’t it?”

Jasmine looked unconvinced, but she kissed me and let me go.

I turned and strode out onto the platform. I heard the crowd stand and clap. They clapped dutifully but without enthusiasm. There were no cheers as there had been when the Macros had been defeated. Today, they were uncertain what I was going to do next.

I waved them back to their seats, and the chamber quieted quickly.

“My critics have been relentless,” I said, “second-guessing my every decision. Perhaps they’re right. I don’t agree with them, but I’ll fight to the death—quite literally—for their right to complain about me.”

A few chuckles rose up, but not many. They didn’t know quite what to make of me, these political hacks and posers. I scared them and made them sneer, all at once. I was part court jester and part great white shark in their minds. An impossible mixture of foolishness and low animal cunning.


“There was an early Roman general I’ve studied over my lifetime,” I said. “A man named Cincinnatus. He was a land-owner, a man who loved his farm. His son was slain over political disputes, but, despite that, when invaders came to Rome he left that farm and became a general and Rome’s dictator. He saved his nation from destruction. When the war was over, however, he gave it all up and returned to his beloved farm.”

They were all staring at me now. I honestly don’t think any of them knew where I was going with this. My thinking was incomprehensible to them. I might as well be some kind of alien bug up there prattling away at the lectern. I knew this, but I pressed ahead. It was the only way I would ever know peace again.

“General George Washington faced a similar moment. He had near absolute power at the end of the American Revolution. Some of the founding fathers pressed him to become the first American king. He rejected that idea, becoming instead the first president. After his term was up, he left office and handed over power to his successor without a qualm. Like Cincinnatus, he returned to his farm and lived out his days in retirement.”

I thought they were beginning to get it. I could see, looking out over the bright lights, that mouths were hanging open. Newsies and politicians alike were stunned. Could it be true? Could old blood-and-guts Riggs really be stepping down?

“I’m performing one last action as your Emperor,” I said, “the drafting and signing of a new document, a constitution that transforms our planet into a republic. I know some of you want a return to tiny independent nations. I don’t think that’s wise, but local governance will be included under the new rules.”

They were buzzing now, unable to contain themselves. In response, I spoke louder and more forcefully.

“In the future, there will be a Prime Minister but never again an emperor or a dictator—at least, that’s how I hope it will go. I myself won’t be here. I’m abdicating and retiring from Star Force. I’ll return to my farm in California and rebuild it. The last time I was there, the place was a wreck.”

There were a few nervous twitters at that. Most of the crowd was talking to their neighbors. A few clapped sporadically. They didn’t know what to do and were too scared to cheer or make any overt move. What if this was all some kind of elaborate ruse to out the traitors?

Crow had done such things, suggesting that maybe he should leave his office. Those who had encouraged him the most had been arrested. It made me sad to think that my people now lived in fear of their government. I’d done my best to write a simple document full of diced-up powers and responsibilities. Mostly it listed what the government could not do. Time would tell if humanity would adhere to it. At least, I’d given them a chance.

When I wrapped up the speech, I thanked them and praised them all unstintingly. I told them our world had won the war against the machines, and it was all due to their superhuman efforts. In short, I gave them the pep-speech of their lives.

That part they ate up. Politicians love nothing more than getting credit for positive events. By the time I left the stage, I received a standing ovation. Perhaps it was the first real one I’d ever gotten. It sounded different, somehow, with cheering and whistling sprinkled in. There was actual enthusiasm in their voices.

Not everyone was happy, of course. Some people had invested a lot in my status. Jasmine was among those people. When I went backstage, I found that she’d vanished without leaving a message. I called her, but she didn’t answer.

I was hurt, but I couldn’t afford to give in to my emotions now. I needed to get the transfer of power worked out. Parliament had to decide who their newly-elected head of state would be and exactly what powers that person would have.

After several weeks of wrangling, we had a document based upon my original that I felt was pretty solid. Individual freedoms were stipulated. Voting practices, division of powers and the like were hammered out.

Would they stick to it? Time would tell.

During all those long days, I never heard from Jasmine. That hurt me more than anything else, but I never let it show.



* * *



My farm was a wreck. It had been looted and partially burned. I had credits enough to fix it up and transform it into a palace, but I resisted that urge.

Sometimes, working with your hands is the best therapy. A single nanotized man can do the work of a dozen normal people. The only machine I had to help me was my father’s old tractor. I decided to use it rather than plowing the fields by hand. I didn’t want my few visitors and neighbors gawking any more than they already did.

Spring turned into summer, and in the Central Valley, that means it gets hot. The sun bronzed my skin and, despite my modifications, I was left sweating and breathing hard when it was a hundred degrees and as still as a desert outside.

I grew crops and rebuilt my house. The new version was better than before, and as most of the neighboring farms had been abandoned, I legally bought extra land from the banks and soon had a nice agricultural business going. I gave in, buying more big machines even though they reminded me of Macros without brainboxes.

On the first of July I was driving my tractor in the cornfields. I’d used a combine to gather the springtime crop a few days earlier, and was replanting and fertilizing again. One of California’s secrets was the long growing season. With hard work and a bit of luck, you could get two or three crops from a field before winter set in.

Something caught my eye as I tooled along, bumping over the furrows and breathing dust. It was the glint of something shiny.

I stopped the tractor and craned my neck. Was that an extra car in the driveway? Something colorful next to my drab pickup?

I suspected right away it was a news reporter. The car looked too fancy to be local. It probably flew—all the new models did. Grumbling, I put my machine back into gear and kept plowing. The fellow would just have to wait until I was done. If I steered off-course now, I’d mess up the furrows.

About an hour later I returned to the barn and parked. Surprisingly, the car was still in the drive. It was a shiny new model with airfoils on the back and skids under the chassis. A rich man’s air-car, just as I’d suspected.

I walked up to the window, already in a sour mood. I didn’t like to be pestered. For the first month or two I’d lived out here, they’d come almost every day. All the online magazines and vid shows wanted an exclusive interview. They rarely got it, not even when they’d sent a beautiful girl with a flashy smile—well, sometimes they’d gotten it then.

The driver got out when she saw me. She was on the other side of the car, standing with her door open and leaning on the roof with one elbow. Her face trembled a bit, and I sensed she was trying to smile. Her smile failed, and she looked ashamed instead.

It was Jasmine.

Her dark hair had lengthened, and the hot breezes lifted her locks until they wrapped around her face and streamed over her shoulder. She pushed strands out of her eyes and finally spoke.

“Hello, Kyle.”

“Hello. Welcome to my humble farm.”

She looked around. “You love it out here, don’t you?”

I leaned on the other side of her car, and we stared across the roof at one another.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s home to me.”

There was a pause in the conversation. I didn’t speak up because I felt no urge to make things easier on her. She’d ignored me for months. It was up to her to tell me whatever it was she wanted to say.


“I’m sorry,” she said finally in a small voice. “I shouldn’t have left you like that.”

I didn’t know what to say. I stood there, looking tough but not angry. I was past being angry about it.

Jasmine opened the back door of her car and pulled something out into the dying afternoon sun. I couldn’t see what she was holding at first, but when she turned to me, she was holding up my baby.

My tough-guy look vanished. I’d lost count of the months, I guess. She’d come to term and delivered. She hadn’t even called to tell me about it, and I’d been avoiding the news nets.

“I delivered him last night,” she said. “When I saw his face, he looked so much like you—I felt awful.”

I stared at the kid. His eyes were closed, and to me he looked pretty much like all babies had looked throughout time.

“Yeah,” I said. “Wow, he does look just like me. What a perfect, beautiful baby!”

She beamed. “I had to come find you,” she said.

What could I do after that? I invited her in, and I served up drinks.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“What have you got?”

“Uh—beer, orange juice and iced tea. That’s about it.”

She laughed and asked for the tea.

I took the opportunity to check her out while she was downing the glass I’d given her. For a normal woman, delivering a first baby would have been a big deal physically. But Jasmine’s body was full of self-repair systems. Her body had returned more or less to normal within hours. Her eyes looked a little tired, but that might have been from the long flight out here.

We talked, and I poked uncertainly at the new kid. He seemed to sleep most of the time.

“What’s his name?” I asked her.

“I haven’t named him yet. I wanted you to help me with that.”

I gave her a blank look. She proceeded to spam me with names, most of which sounded pretentious to me. We finally went with Cody. I’d always liked that name.

The hours went by quietly as they tend to do on a farm. I wasn’t the kind who ran the screens all day, watching net casts. I’d been relishing the peaceful sigh of the winds for months.

When it got dark, I honestly thought she was going to get back into her car and go home. But she didn’t. We talked instead about why she’d left and what she’d been doing with her family back in India. She’d resigned her commission from Star Force, too, in order to take care of the new kid.

“Uh,” I said at about midnight. “I’m turning in. You want to stay the night? I’ve got several empty bedrooms.”

She looked shy. “All right.”

I had to kick a cat off the bed in what had once been Jake’s room. I threw on some fresh sheets and then I came to a sudden realization: where was the baby going to sleep?

I climbed up into the attic and began rummaging around. I recalled that we’d once had—

“Found it!” I called down, pulling a dusty basinet from the attic.

Jasmine was at the bottom of the ladder. “You don’t have to worry about it. He can sleep in his car seat. See? He’s out already.”

“Nah, let the kid stretch out flat.”

We cleaned it and set it up, and it gave me a little pang to see her put Cody to bed in that basket. It was white and had a few scorch marks on it from the Nano ships—my place had partly burned down when they’d first invaded—but it was serviceable.

“All my kids slept in that thing,” I said. “All three of them now.”

For some reason, seeing a new baby in the house brought back a flood of memories. Even the hot smell of the little guy seemed familiar. I had to swallow a few times and went downstairs to get a beer. When I came back up, I was surprised to see Jasmine rolling the basinet out of Jake’s room and into mine.

“Um,” I said, looking confused. “I know you want him to get acquainted with me and all that, but he’s going to need feeding in the night you know…”

She shook her head and laughed at me. “Don’t play the idiot. What do you want me to do? Beg?”

“Um…no.”

I honestly didn’t figure it out until she stood next to my bed and began undressing. At last, daylight shone into my dusty brain.

“Oh,” I said. “You’re sleeping in here, too.”

“We all are,” she said, coming close to me. “Is that okay with you?”

“Yes,” I heard myself saying.

“I never want to leave your bed again, Kyle.”

I had her in my arms. She was partly undressed, and her body felt very good up against mine. I hadn’t had any other girlfriends since she’d left me, and after all our talk during the day, I’d figured out she hadn’t met anyone, either.

“Well then,” I said, “we’ll have to get married.”

It just came out of my mouth. I hadn’t planned it or anything. Maybe my brain didn’t always work right, but I’m a guy who goes by his gut instincts. I felt now was the time, and the move was the right one.

Jasmine smiled. “I thought you were never going to ask.”

That was it. No getting down on one knee. No ring. No parental permission—we were both over thirty, after all, and we already had a kid. We were suddenly engaged, just like that.

I reflected later as we lay in the hot room together, that ours had never been a traditional relationship. We hadn’t had time for all that. Maybe now we would.

That night I hardly slept. It wasn’t just the kid’s fault, either.

I kept staring out the windows at the stars. There wasn’t much in the way of urban glare outside. The population of California, like the rest of the planet, had been cut in half. The cities were quieter, more subdued.

The people hadn’t all died, and there was a massive migration going on, but the countryside was still dark and empty.

I watched the stars out my window, knowing that’s where so many had gone. Those balloon-ships I’d built had carried away the first wave of a hundred million or so. After that, they’d come back for more. People were writing and calling home to tell relatives to join them on fresh worlds without radiation poisoning, burning seas and the like. Old Earth was emptying out and becoming quieter.

I watched the lights in the warm summer sky. The stars were bigger and brighter than they’d ever been in my memory.

I couldn’t help but wonder what else was out there. There were a billion stars in our galaxy and a billion galaxies beyond ours. We’d only scratched the tip of the iceberg.

Before dawn, as Jasmine awoke for yet another feeding—that kid was always hungry—I told myself that I probably had years before anything else came out of the skies at us. After all, we’d not been bothered for a long time before the Nanos first showed up.

Sure, the Ancients might come looking for the Earthman who’d dared to build his own little ring. But that might take another thousand years or more to happen. With any luck, I wouldn’t be around then to worry about it.



The End