The Frozen Empire

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. For the harrowed scream of a prematurely dying star, though unheard, strikes panic, terror, and dread into countless civilizations.

Called into the observatory by one of his subordinates, Harold glared at the fluorescent illustration of the star just before, and during the explosion. The partly built Dyson Sphere, depicted transparently to show what happened underneath, seemed to suffer no damage until the eruption, suggesting that the problem lay within. Furthermore, there were no symptoms of a stars natural death, not to a normal scale anyway, as the temperature of the star suddenly doubled multiple times per second. It did not take long for the devastating explosion to unfold. The entire region was destroyed, the solar system, nearby rogue planets, everything. It was all reduced to a storm of vicious shrapnel which will brutally bombard nearby solar systems for years to come.

Harold's team found out about this only when the long range receptors registered unnaturally high levels of radiation and heat, echoing throughout the cosmos in all directions. Like a scream in a massive, empty, room.

Upon further inspection of this phenomenon, the catastrophe was revealed.

Harold sighed “This is the fourth one this year.”

“There was nothing wrong with it just hours ago, no swelling, no changes in pressure, nothing.“ added Samuel, gesturing towards another monitor, which bristled with various, constantly changing, statistics.

“And its closer. Much closer than the last one.”

“Look at them, they are following a pattern, and we are right on its path.”

“We can not be sure of a pattern yet.”

“Four stars in a row, all of which we expected to live for billions of years, have just died. I think there is a pattern.”

“We have to take into account both possibilities, that it is random, and that there truly is a pattern. Do not assume anything. Not again.”

“Not again? Last time it worked.”

Harold shot him an annoyed look ”Yes, it did. But was the extra cost really necessary? This time we will be far more careful.“

Samuel timidly mumbled his agreement. After a short silence, he spoke again:

“This one was inhabited.”

“It was... what became of their home planet?”

“The receptors do not indicate any activity in the area. The only thing we know is that it was severely damaged with the force of the blast.”

“And there does not seem to be any attempt to escape?”

“Not that we are aware of.”

Harold could not imagine why such an explosion could occur so suddenly. Neither could he think of any logical reason why the inhabitants of that solar system, made no effort to escape their fate. Could the receptors be giving false information? What are the chances of that though? They are usually checked four times per year, and this year they have already been checked six times after the previous unexpected reports. Was it some kind of weapon? Harold shuddered at the thought, yet he side-lined this idea with the explanation that a civilisation with the gargantuan power that such a feat would take would not need to destroy the entire star to annihilate the inhabitants… and what reason would they have for doing so anyway? But the most intriguing, and disturbing, thing of all was that the civilisation made no attempt to survive. Not a single craft was detected leaving their solar system. In the days before the explosion, even all interplanetary travel ceased.

Samuel spoke again, breaking his thoughtful silence

“May I go? My shift is over and this was a long and exhausting day.”

Harold nodded, again studying the illustration of the star's final moments.

Samuel slowly walked down the stairs of their raised platform, sliding his fingers over the smooth, gold, handrail. Suddenly he turned, and added

“We should have tried to make contact.”

Harold slowly turned to him, “And risk getting attacked by creatures with the power to build a Dyson Sphere? It's better that no one knows we’re here”

“But if they have the technology to build a Dyson Sphere, surely they knew about us long before we found out about them”

“Not necessarily. We were on the brink of discovering how easily those receptors can fold space for over two hundred years, and we still only discovered them by chance. Perhaps they were not so lucky”

“Or maybe they were, just with the Dyson Sphere instead of the receptors… maybe we could have traded technology.”

“We can't reach a compromise with the other governments of our own human race, how well do you think a trade with an entirely different race would work out? Especially when this is a race which may or may not be that of bloodthirsty insects or something. It was simply too risky.”

Samuel turned back towards the door, secretly rolling his eyes. He was starting to get worried for Harold, who, in Samuel’s opinion, has become paranoid with minimizing risk ever since the accident. He did not understand why it had such an effect on Harold, its not like they could have reacted in any way other than they did, and yet, he insists that they should have done more. Planned better. Or, as he liked to put it, “actually used their brains for once.” Well, to his credit, Harold did seem to include himself in that statement, disregarding the miracles he regularly pulled of when dealing with catastrophic situations. Samuel left the room with another short goodbye.

Harold sat there for many more hours. Replaying the recording over, and over, and over. Watching every single statistic, one by one, as it went from its normal state to a promise of death within literal seconds. He learned long ago that frustration got him nowhere. Instead he forced a cold and calculating feeling, pushing away his emotions, pushing away any thoughts other than, “how?" and "why?" Ensuring that he does not pay attention to anything that may distract him. He did this to the point that he did not notice when the heavy, iron, door opened and another of his subordinates entered the room. Used to seeing him this way, they went about their business without so much as a greeting.

Eventually however, his silent analysis was interrupted by four strong knocks. He groaned, the ringing, commanding knocks could mean only one thing, one of the guards was sent to deliver a message. His subordinate glanced at him, and pointedly returned to their own calculations, making it clear that, should the man decide not to open the door, they will not remember any knocking if ever asked.

Harold knew that doing this too often would cause trouble however, so he half-heartedly dragged himself to open the door, fully expecting to be called to another, multiple hour long, and just as boring meeting. Sure enough when he opened the door, a tall, imposing man filled the entire frame. His assortment of weapons and armour only multiplied the already intimidating way he looked, especially to a short and skinny man like Harold. He recognised the man as a friend from the old times, and so he greeted him in the sarcastic manner that the soldier would expect.

“What do you want you walking talking armoury?”

The man smiled, and responded “I'm going for a stroll to your favourite playground, the winery, and I need you to come with me.”

“Why, do you need help carrying some of those guns or something?” Harold asked, even though he was already out the door and walking through the shining corridor to where the elevator imitated an empty stretch of wall. He knew perfectly well what a trip to the winery meant. The winery was the ground floor of a very old, and incredibly important building. Its importance, of course, was attributed to the fact that it contained the winery, and the headquarters of the planetary government, where all life and death decisions are made, is sometimes mentioned, in passing.

The time spent in the elevator and walking through the corridors of the ground floor, which contained a machine component factory, was livened up by their constant friendly taunts and jokes. They also spoke about the old times, and some new adventures that they recently had, yet inevitably the conversation would return to their battle of wits. It was not long however before they reached the edge of the building, and entered their pods. These were attached to the wall of the building, letting them enter without having to wear heavy suits and walking around from the entrance, which, on this planet, would have taken quite a while. It was not yet fully terraformed. Its pressure was hellishly high, and the terrain was rough and difficult to traverse, hence the pods, which overcame this problem by hovering slightly above ground. After entering the pods, they closed their own doors as well as that of the boarding site within the building, and began their short journey, to the boarding site of the winery.

Once inside, Harold was immediately approached by an employee, and handed a glass of his usual choice. He bitterly remembered the soldier, who was still escorting him, describing the winery as his “favourite playground.” He pushed this thought away, yet he could not resist giving his friend a small shove when he noticed the satisfaction in his brown eyes.

He was not called here to visit the winery however, instead, he took the elevator to the next floor, and braced for what was to be the most boring meeting of his life. Just like every other meeting.

“Harold, I'm glad you could join us” said Claire, sipping on her own glass of wine. Her perfect blue hair and clean uniform, painfully reminded him how unkept he currently was. Unshaved, his longer than usual hair would not stay in the position he wanted it to, and wearing the first trousers and shirt he found at the top of his drawer. “Saying I look like a monkey, is an offence to monkeys,” he concluded.

“My pleasure.” He finally moved his attention from Claire onto the other officials in the room. Immediately, his Jaw dropped. He did not even expect to see Claire, but the others? Seeing them shocked him completely. Every single highest ranking official, from all branches of the planetary government, was present. The thought of this meeting was starting to fill him with something other than boredom, for the first time in a long time, he got quite nervous. His irritation at this fact did not help much in maintaining his unbothered facial expression.

“Relax, we are just here for a quick chat,” Claire stated, although Harold did not believe in a single word.

“I didn't expect that this meeting was so important, apologies for my… majestic, appearance.” Sarcasm. His key to getting out of every awkward situation with at least a polite smile, and sometimes even a laugh from the others.

Harold sat in one of the free seats, and the introductory greetings began. Claire’s words echoed around the chamber. It was built in such a way that no technology was needed in order to convey one’s voice to hundreds of listeners. The cylinder shaped room, with its gothic style domed roof, almost like a cathedral, easily echoed the words to every part of the room, even those furthest away from the speaker. Comfortable chairs lined the walls, each row slightly behind, and slightly higher than the previous. Harold always thought that the headquarters looked like a theatre. Then he was addressed by Claire again.

“Harold. You have previously sent word of unexpectedly exploding stars. Do you have any update on this?”

Harold remained silent for a moment. He slowly organized his thoughts, and began the story of that days events. Recounting not only what happened with the star, but also the key points of his conversation with Samuel. The explosions seemed to be slowly creeping towards them, leaving a trail of destruction. He emphasised that this time, the solar system that was destroyed was inhabited. And by a powerful civilisation, far ahead of them in the Kardashev scale, making this tragedy all the more threatening.

As he finished his story, various officials nodded, grunted, or muttered words of confirmation as if they expected him to say exactly what he did. He did not ask about this, knowing that he will find out soon enough. After a short pause, Claire spoke again:

“Well Harold you are receiving a promotion. Your clearance has just been raised so listen carefully.” She did not leave any time for him to absorb this information, there was none of the usual ceremonial behaviours, and neither did he sense anything other than urgency. He remained silent and hid his joy, and fear, behind an emotionless poker face. Claire continued without a pause, “Two months ago we have received a message. We do not know who, what, or where it is from, just that it is from a different civilisation somewhere in space. All of our alliances best cryptographers, from every planet and nation, have been working on decoding this message. It was obviously sent to be decoded easily, as the cryptographers maintain that only basic maths was needed to understand the main point.”

At this point Harold could not keep in his curiosity and excitement any longer, this meant that they did make contact with another civilisation, the benefits this could bring were immeasurable. He asked, speaking quickly and excitedly, “What did they say?”

Here, Claire paused, and finished her sentence, “The main point, was that they are partisans, fighting a massive empire, that is far too powerful to be stopped. They are trying to destroy all stars and celestial bodies in the universe, as they believe this will force the "Great Reset of the Universe" before the empire spreads agony to further nations. They are warning us, that if we want to survive until the final stages of their plan, we should leave our solar system, as the star will be destroyed, ‘within three orbits of the sun’… they consider this merciful as, if we leave, this allows us to live the rest of our lives.”

With each sentence, Harold sunk deeper into despair. For a single second, for one small moment, he let go of his pessimism, and hoped that contact could have been a good thing. Only to find out that apparently there was an unstoppable empire so evil, that it was the "good guys" who are trying to end the universe just to end their cruelty. Brilliant.

“Well? What will we do? If they are powerful enough to destroy those stars like that, then we have nothing against them either,” asked Harold

“Good Question Harold, and now that you are promoted, we can’t wait until you use all those resources to answer it.”