Star Fields

Chapter No.108 Frozen

Chapter No.108 Frozen

A big freeze is not necessarily cold.

Molly's search for habitable planets wasn't going all that well, so I decided to take a break and go to the Black Hole, the makeshift bar on the agricultural/recreational deck. Ben, Jerry, Alex, Vince and Barney were already there.

"Looks like the entire male faction of the collective is present and accounted for," Barney said.

"Not quite," I said, taking a seat at the table they were at. "There's over a thousand male androids on this vessel."

An android barmaid appeared and handed me a glass of beer. I thanked her and took a sip.

"Have you discovered any new tricks?" Alex asked.

"Not really. I guess I will discover them as needed."

"If this Tyco bastard can project himself, what are the chances he could come onto our vessel?" Vince asked.

"I would think that he would be taking a big risk. There are over twelve thousand androids on this vessel."

"He sure is one slippery character," Barney said.

"That's for sure, but he can't elude us forever."

"You are a god, Jason," Alex said. "You'll overcome him eventually."

"Yes, but he's like the god Invictus. He's very difficult to kill."

"Even if you did, he could be resurrected again, starting the cycle all over again."

I sighed. "You're right. Maybe this is our Hell after all."

"You will overcome him, Jason," Jessica, the barmaid, said. "You have one advantage he doesn't."

"What's that?"

"You have loyal followers who love you. He reigns with terror over frightened followers."

"I hadn't considered that. Perhaps I could overcome him through his dissatisfied followers."

"That's a good possibility," Alex said. "You could try to incite a revolt among them."

"I'll have to keep that idea in mind," I said.

When I got back up to the command deck, Molly had located a possible habitable planet. She pointed to a tiny spec on the image of the galaxy. "It's right there, a G3 dwarf star with seven planets. One of them is in the habitable zone."

"I didn't think there were any stars other than red dwarfs in this galaxy," I said.

"Just because it's a dying galaxy doesn't mean that it doesn't contain other classes of stars. The predominant type of star is red dwarf only because they last so long on the main sequence."

"Make sense to me." I turned to Judy. "Take us there."

The trip to the star system took twenty minutes at maximum warp. We approached the fifth planet in stealth mode.

"The planet is about 1.3 times larger than Earth and has an atmosphere that contains oxygen," Margaret said. "I also detect water in the form of clouds."

"Yeah," Molly said. "This planet's atmosphere is very clouded."

"Why is that?"

"Usually, it's an indication of a water world, but maybe there's another reason. One that I could think of is that the planet has a lot of ice on its surface. Ice sublimes and adds moisture to an atmosphere."

"I think you're right," Margaret said. "I'm detecting lots of ice on the planet's surface."

"Infrared scans indicate that there are plenty of land masses," Molly said. "There are indications of structures, but the resolution is not high enough to determine their precise orientation."