Page 20 of Scars & Starlight
“Why don’t you wipe out the Ghorvek that way, then?” she wisely asks.
“We did,” I reply grimly. “There are none left on their home planet, but still multitudes in the vastness of the universe. I lost my father, the king, in that battle.”
Her fingers graze the back of my hand in a caress that makes my pulse race. “I’m sorry,” she whispers earnestly.
I give her a tense smile. It’s not her fault. His death was one of the motivators for my pursuing the Ghorvek so relentlessly as well. In a way, it brought me to her.
“You okay, Tara?” the younger soldier asks when we reach their lines. I’m not completely at ease with how he looks at her.
“Fine, Eric,” she replies with a friendly smile. “How’s Stacy?” she asks him and the rest of the wary humans. “And did I miss Micah’s funeral?”
The older soldier clears his throat and points toward a bunker entrance. “Let’s get out of the sun and talk.”
11
TARA
“Stacy is fine, Tara,” our medic slash minister Patricia says as we sit down at the round table. This is where all the big decisions for our camp are made. “But we cremated Micah along with the two other soldiers we lost yesterday. Bob and Peter,” she adds when I turn my head sharply at her words.
I knew Bob and Peter, of course, but they were both a lot older than I am and kept to that crowd mostly. Still, I feel a moment of guilt for not feeling sadder over their loss just because we weren’t close.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. I look at Kairen, who sat down next to me, seemingly unperturbed that seven base elders are dissecting him with their eyes. How the tables have turned. I address my family of circumstance. “The Avaren have told me more about the Ghorvek’s crimes than I wanted to know. But they’re here to stop them. Kill every last one of them.”
“How did these Ghorvek find us?” Doctor Feldman addresses Kairen respectfully. “For that matter, how did you?”
“Doctor Feldman is an astrophysicist,” I tell the prince.A freakingprince!“He was at Caltech when the invasion happened, and no one knows more about space than he does.”
The scientist’s cheeks color slightly, and he shakes his head. “I’m sure what I know is but a raindrop in the ocean of knowledge our friend here has.”
“Flatterer,” Patty murmurs, nudging her boyfriend. They both lost their spouses in those first weeks four years ago, and found a second chance here in this new world.
Kairen gives them a warm smile before addressing my little guy. “Kiko, please tell them about the QEA. In simplistic terms, so everyone understands.”
The robot bounces on his long legs before hopping onto the table, scaring a few of the elders. “Certainly, Commander.” Kiko faces my fellow humans. “The QEA – or quantum entanglement array – is a method of travel we inherited from the Creators. These particles of perfectly entangled pairs were seeded when the universe was still very young and not as spread out as it is now. It is thanks to that that space-traveling species bypass the limitations of trans-universal travel, such as time distortion. The particles are embedded into the framework of spacetime, scattered across space. When ships like the Sovereign travel, they do not move in the traditional sense. Rather, they dematerialize at the molecular level using nanite disassembly. Matter is translated into quantum information and transmitted to the paired particle in the array. There, the original atomic structure is reassembled with exact fidelity. Essentially, objects teleport across space instantaneously and without relativistic time dilation.”
I stare at the image Kiko brings up, his peepers once more acting like projectors.
Holy cow.
Hundreds of galaxies, maybe thousands, with glowing displays of where, I guess, these particles can be found.
“Time dilation?” Sergeant Potts asks. He’s also staring at the projection, trying to hide his awe.
“Yeah,” I mutter, still dazed by the display. “I thought you said in simple terms.”
Doctor Feldman clears his throat. “When an object moves near the speed of light – which is the fastest speed anything with mass can travel at – time starts acting weird. It moves more slowly for the object than for someone standing still. So, if you were on a spaceship flying at nearly a billion kilometers per hour, only a few hours might pass for you, while decades go by here on Earth. By the time you returned, I’d be pushing daisies.”
My eyes bug out. “So, if the Avaren traveled from NGC 1300 without this array, it would take them…” I open and close my mouth, unable to wrap my mind around it. I see most of the elders look as stunned as I feel.
“About sixty-one million years,” Feldman supplies.
“However, for the Avaren, it would be closer to three hundred thousand years,” Kiko adds, sounding pleased to be of assistance.
“Oh, certainly, just a blip,” I quip, making Kairen and Doctor Feldman grin.
“So, why are you here?” Potts asks, back to his usual no-nonsense demeanor.
Kairen takes a deep breath before searching for my eyes. “Translate for me, please, Princess. It’s always best when it comes from one of their own and not a mech.”
