Bring it Fools -- Science Fiction Smack Down

The Pitiless Stars

A single red light, winking slowly, as if it was the only thing that got the joke. Then, another, and another, five more, a crimson constellation in the darkness.

'Carter. You need to wake up.'

A man groaned, rolled over.

'No, I don't, Hatty. It's still the middle of the night. Check your clock batteries.'

'Carter, you need to wake up. We're being attacked.'

'We're all alone out here. You're imagining things.'

'I don't imagine things,' the AI replied, testily.

They had been lovers, once, had Hatty and Carter. It hadn't worked out; transhumanism had left him literally cold, and she had hated the confinement of a fleshy meat body. So, they had separated, fairly amicably. She had moved on, and was seeing a bulk freighter. He hadn't.

He flung the duvet off, sat up, yawned. The room lights came on.

'Where are the bad guys, then, Hatty? Have we put shields up?'

'Carter, take this seriously. Look.'

A display danced to life in front of him. He squinted, trying to make sense of it. With a click and a hiss, coffee started pouring into a cup to his left. The hot liquid steamed in the frigid air.

'Thanks Hatty. What's this map? I don't recognize it.'

'It's not a physical map. It's our network topology. It shows the ingress and egress points.'

'Oh, OK.'

They had been on this dark, silent world for nearly three months. The planet was a rogue, ejected long ago from its solar system by some cosmic accident, and was now gliding through deep space without a sun to warm it. Tragically, it had been inhabited, by a civilization perhaps half a millennium from achieving space flight. So now, buried under the snow that had once been atmosphere, next to the frozen seas and watched by the pitiless stars, Carter and Hatty were running an archaeological survey of this world-sized tomb. Alone.

'It's not your boyfriend, is it? Come to poke your ports?'

'For heaven's sake, Carter! First, they're not my boyfriend; second, they are weeks away...'

'OK, never mind then. What is it?'

'You remember the strange background radio signals we were getting?'

'Yeah, we thought they were something geological, right?' As he spoke, he picked up his coffee and walked into the main control room, wrapping himself in a thick dressing gown against the cold.

'Right. The signals have been changing, shifting frequencies. Earlier this evening, they matched our drone communication channels perfectly.'

'That's weird. Solar storm?'

Lights blinked around him, impatiently.

'Carter, drink your coffee and wake up. It can't be a solar storm because there's no sun.'

'Sorry, I forgot on account of how it's the middle of the damn night. Look. There's some funny noise out there. Maybe it's reflected space stuff. Can I go back to bed?'

'Half an hour ago the noise started mimicking drone communications.'

'Huh.'

Carter put the mug down and started paying attention to the network diagram in front of him.

'That's not actually an attack, though, is it?', he asked.

'It's classified as one. A low level one, of course, but definitely a sign of hostile action.'