The Silent Planet: A Space Opera (Cosmic Cyclone Series, Book 1) Read online

  Everybody's basic temperament seemed to have come to the fore in an aggravated way. People naturally inclined towards caution now seemed crushed with depression, while the more sanguine ones of the bunch were getting angrier by the second.

  And Anderson and Stella Halvorsen were now snarling at one another like angry animals.

  Ben Harrow hadn't entered the command center's waiting room along with everybody else. As soon as he became aware of the change that had come over Captain Anderson, he'd stepped back into the tunnel and was now leaning on the wall, a silent onlooker.

  What devilish scheme had captured their minds now? He was familiar with contraptions that induced hallucinations. They'd been around for hundreds of years. But this was new. This concourse appeared booby-trapped with a mood enhancer. Ben was curious to find out how powerful this mood enhancer was. He didn't go into the waiting room himself, nor did he stop his troops from being manipulated by this machine. Instead, he stood and watched.

  He almost chuckled when he saw Halvorsen and Anderson spit cotton at one another. Outwardly, they fit well together, Ben felt. He also thought he'd detected a bit of chemistry between them sometime before. Both were calm professionals, of course. On duty, they completely ignored their mutual attraction and treated one another with the reservedness and respect that their ranks demanded. But right now those two beautiful people were working themselves into a shouting match.

  Ben shook his head and giggled.

  The only two serene ones in the sobbing, fussing, angry mob that was Aleph Company were Corporals Vesantha Raj and Shanti Kumar. Both women weren't the tallest and their rifles in their hands almost seemed too big for them. They wandered around with wide brown eyes, and took in the spectacle before their eyes, clearly not understanding what madness had befallen their fellow Marines.

  Ben made a mental note of that.

  Why were they immune?

  From looking into their files, he knew that both of them came from a hot jungle world in Eastern Orion, a world whose name he had forgotten. Compared to their home planet, this waiting room was positively frosty. It had the temperature of a cold spring morning in the mountains of northern Terra Babylonis. Ben once had a palace there…

  Then Vesantha Raj suddenly stopped, closed her eyes and began to massage the bridge of her nose. A steep wrinkle appeared on her forehead, as if she were in pain. When she took her hand off her face, Ben saw that she was staring at the innocent floor in utter despair.

  One more down.

  Perplexed, Shanti Kumar addressed Vesantha when she noticed. He saw her lips move, but because of the din Ben couldn't hear what she said.

  Suddenly an arguing Marine right inside the entrance took his rifle off his shoulder and pointed it at his perceived adversary. The other trooper, not to be outdone, reached for his rifle, too.

  Ben decided enough was enough. With big steps he walked over and entered the concourse. Immediately a foul mood came over him, too.

  Boy, this is ugly.

  He grabbed the two young men by the neck, shook them and said, "You will not frazzle one another. Is that understood?"

  His booming voice got the attention of the others. Their squealing and bickering subsided and everybody's gaze was on him.

  "You're being manipulated!" Ben shouted. "Everybody, get out and go back into the tunnel!"

  Everybody obeyed, including Anderson and Halvorsen. As soon as Joel walked across the metal threshold of the waiting room, his foul mood fell off like a cloak and he felt so ashamed. He glanced at Halvorsen out of the tail of his eye and saw that she was as attractive as ever. Joel sighed heavily. If he could have, he would have sunk into the floor.

  Halvorsen herself stared at the ground. Still stern-faced, she seemed to notice the change, too.

  What had he done?

  He'd insulted the most attractive and witty and thoughtful Marine that had ever graced a spaceship.

  He had to mend this immediately.

  Joel exhaled, turned and stood in front of Stella and said, "Listen, Halvorsen, I apologize for having acted like a buffoon in there. You heard what the general said, we've been manipulated. How about let's forget what we said to one another?"

  Stella's usually full mouth was a thin line. Since he was standing in her way, she stared over his shoulder into space and finally said, "All right, Sir."

  Joel heaved another sigh, nodded and decided to leave her standing there for the time being. Once they were back on Terra Gemina, he'd somehow make it up to her. He didn't exactly know how, but he'd find a way.

  Finally the last trooper cleared the concourse and the vitrum doors fell shut again.

  The general stood in the tunnel and addressed them. "Everybody doing okay again?"

  They were sobs and coughs and groans as the troops dealt with the aftermath of the emotional attack they'd just lived through.

  "Sir, yes, Sir," Joel Anderson shouted.

  "Good," General Harrow replied. "We're finding all kinds of interesting machines on this station. I have to admit that I had expected this to go much easier. And it's no consolation that I heard on the battalion command channel that other units are having similar problems.

  "Now, I don't think I'm mistaken when I expect that all these defensive measures are being controlled by a computer in the command center. Somehow we have to get across the concourse and into the command center proper without knocking ourselves out. The engineers and I will sit down together and talk on how to progress. In the meantime, you others can sit down and drink a swig and make up with one another. At this time I ask the engineers to come to me."

  Ben and the engineers walked away from the rest of the troops, and right where the tunnel turned into a shiny vitrum tube they sat down in a circle.

  Outside, beyond the tangle of tubes, an x-jet floated by. Stars of many colors sparkled in the distance.

  Ben touched his earpiece and dialed himself into the fighter channel.

  "Juggernaut, Rambler, Gargoyle, this is the general. Report status. How are you guys doing out there?"

  A breathless second went by before one of them answered. "Juggernaut here, Sir. All is quiet on the space frontier."

  Good. "You monitoring the drones?"

  "Yes, Sir," Rambler replied.

  "And?"

  "Kasaganaan's the silent planet, Sir."

  "All right, carry on. Harrow out." Ben's attention returned to the circle of men in front of him. He decided to test them.

  "Let me posit a question," he said.

  The men looked at him, sober-faced and tense.

  "I understand that all of you are mathematicians and several of you have a degree in physics. Plus, we ate a short while back, so you know food." Ben studied his fingernails. "But there was no dessert. Now, if I had a pie and wanted to calculate the length of a quarter pie, how would I go about?"

  The engineers' tension mounted and some began to fidget. What kind of question was this? Was Harrow mocking them? If yes, what was the punishment for not knowing?

  "Not sure I understand, Sir," a bold soul said.

  Ben looked at him from under his brows. "Think."

  So, he was meaning it, the men concluded. He wanted to know about the length of a quarter pie. Thinking hard, they groped for an answer. Some rubbed their chins, others scratched their scalp. For the longest time no clue would come.

  A quarter pie…

  Pi!

  The light went on behind the eyes of Specialist Futse Kung. Ben Harrow was talking about numbers and not dessert!

  The length of a quarter pie…

  Could it be that the general was talking about the elusive quadrature—the squaring—of the circle?

  "Sir!" he said eagerly. "I think I know."

  The others glanced at him. Kung was a junior member of the platoon. What did he know about quartered pies?

  "A circle with a diameter of one has a circumference the length of pi," Kung began, eager to please. "A circle can be quartered—or sliced in any
old way. But Pi is an irrational number and cannot be neatly expressed as a common fraction in terms of rational numbers. Pi, and consequently a quarter of pi, can only be approximated."

  "Good thinking, Soldier," Ben said.

  This kid was amazing.

  "Got an equation for me?"

  "There are several ways to arrive at a quarter pi," Futse Kung replied, trying hard not to sound like a know-it-all. "A quarter of pi being the length of one side of a square of the same surface area as a circle with a circumference of pi. My favorite way to get there is to start with the rational number one and to alternately subtract and add the single fractions of successive uneven rational numbers to it. You know, one minus one-third plus… Let me write it down for you."

  The engineer switched his tablet on. His finger slid over the smooth glass and wrote:

  π/4= 1-1/3+1/5-1/7+1/9-1/11+1/13…

  He held up his tablet for Ben to see.

  The general glanced at it. His eyes gleamed and a satisfied look came over his face.

  Specialist Kung noticed and cracked a giant grin. "God's sense of humor?" He brushed a skein of jet-black hair off his forehead and his pale face shone.

  "A circle can't be squared, but that wasn't what I'd asked for," Ben said. "You answered my question, Marine. Now call up the holo of his place here with your tablet. We've got work to do."

  "Aye, Sir."

  Kung leveled his tablet, touched a button and a 3D-holo of the command station hung in the air above the screen. They zoomed in on the steel door, the last obstacle to overcome, and discussed its possible locking mechanisms. Still recuperating from a dramatic mood swing, the men had difficulty to concentrate. When they finally had come up with a plan, they went back to the swing doors of the concourse.

  The Marines fell silent and watched as one pale, dark-haired engineering specialist, equipped with a box containing diagnostic tools and other fancy electronics, pushed through the doors and went in with purposeful strides. But before he'd even reached the halfway point between the entrance and the steel door which he intended to coax into opening, Engineer Kung slowed down and suddenly stopped—and hung his head.

  Uh oh, Ben thought. He was watching with bated breath. This didn't look good.

  The toolbox slid from the engineer's trembling hand and clattered to the ground. His shoulders began to heave and he pulled his head in even more. The tall man took on the air of a whipped pup. Covering his face with his hands, he sank down to his knees and began to weep. As if beaten by invisible forces, he slouched and finally lay on the floor, sobbing.

  This was going too far.

  Ben had to act. He pushed through his Marines, shoved the double doors out of his way and strode into the waiting room.

  As soon as he was inside, he stopped dead in his tracks, stunned—because a furious anger was rolling over him like a tsunami. Cold and black and irresistible, it pulled him down into an uncharted darkness of the soul. Within a split second he'd become as mad as in his worst days on Neo-Ba. The angry Emperor was back.

  Ben was ready to cast lightnings.

  He was smart enough to realize that this mysterious mood amplifier had grown in potency since the last time he'd been in here just half an hour ago. Where he'd only been in a foul mood before, he was now close to turning into a stark raving maniac—with outsized powers.

  He couldn't afford that!

  For his Marines' sake he couldn't.

  Pride suddenly flooded his soul and he threw his head back. A sneer settled on his face. Wasn't he Ben—Neb? Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor of Neo Babylonia? Wasn't he one of the brightest brains and most gifted scientists and greatest politicians and military leaders that had ever come into the universe? Who cared what those peons thought! They existed so they could execute his orders.

  Ben closed his eyes and shook himself.

  He was going mad—again!

  The bottom seemed to drop out of him when he suddenly remembered his forty years alone in dark space.

  Never again did he want to repeat those.

  Summoning all of his willpower, Ben forced himself to turn around. Like a drunk man he staggered back to the swing doors. With a desperate hand he reached out and tried to grab its handle, but for some reason his groping fingers missed it. Blinking furiously, Ben tried to wipe away this crazy haughtiness and confusion and anger.

  The vitrum door suddenly opened and Stella Halvorsen reached in. She grabbed his outstretched hand and pulled him out of the concourse.

  Dazed, Ben sat down right where he was. With wide open eyes he stared into the tunnel from where they had come.

  His Marines looked at him with unbelieving faces.

  Could it be that Harrow wasn't invincible?

  "Here, Sir," the voice of Lieutenant Halvorsen said. "Drink this."

  Without looking up, Ben took the bottle from her hand and did as told. The liquid was lukewarm, but whatever was in it sobered him up in a hurry.

  Ben stood, turned around and pointed at the engineer still wallowing on the ground within the waiting room. "Specialist Kung needs help! Corporal Shanti Kumar, come here."

  Perplexed, Shanti rushed up to the general and stood in front of him, saluting. "Sir, yes, Sir!"

  "Corporal, I want you to tell me three things that went well for you today," Ben demanded.

  Shanti Kumar blinked. "Beg pardon, Sir?"

  "Three things, Corporal, that you perceive as having lightened your load today. Good experiences. Things that went well."

  "I see," Shanti said. Her gaze went to the ceiling as she pondered the general's strange order.

  "Three things you are thankful for, Corporal," Ben insisted when she kept mum.

  Shanti inhaled briskly. "Well, Sir, I count it a privilege to be part of this mission and to serve under you, Sir."

  Ben figured she might have said that just to mollify him. "Something more personal, Corporal."

  "Yes, Sir." She drew in a breath. "I count it a blessing that I wasn't as nauseated as some of the others when we came off the pylon road," Shanti said thoughtfully.

  "That's one," Ben said and nodded.

  Over in the concourse, the engineer was still wallowing on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. They heard him through the vitrum doors. His mood was killing him.

  "I'm very thankful for the fact that you neutralized what we call the red ghost," Shanti said. "And I'm especially happy not to be blind, Sir, thanks to you."

  "That's three." Ben was satisfied. He cocked his eyebrow and pointed at Shanti. "Corporal, I want you to go through those glass doors and I want you to drag your comrade out to where we are."

  Shanti's heart began to hammer away. "Why me, Sir?"

  "Because of all of us, you are the least affected by the mood amplifier that ruins this command station right now."

  "I see, Sir."

  "But even you, Corporal, will experience mood swings once you are in there. If you feel a depression coming on and the bottom is about to drop out from under you, I want you to remember those three good items that you just reported. I want you to focus your mind on positive things while you are in there. Under no circumstances are you allowed to give way to mental rantings and ramblings, understood?

  Shanti nodded. "Understood, Sir."

  "Now, that's an order." Ben raised his forefinger. "We depend on you, Corporal."

  Together they went to the vitrum doors and Ben held one of them open for her as she slipped by and entered the concourse.

  Shanti wasted no time. With decisive strides she walked up to the engineer, a strong man. Right now he lay by her feet, reduced to a whimpering pup. When she crouched and grabbed his jacket behind the neck to drag him towards the door, hateful thoughts came galloping into her mind like charging rhinos. From some dark place within her, rage began to shoot up like sour steam from a crevice in a volcano.

  What was she doing here?

  She was about to save a white guy from his folly, a privileged colonist with a four-year educati
on in physics and mechanics and mathematics and engineering?

  Was she out of her mind?

  The rat had studied in a nice clean university while she'd suffered in the jungles of Terra Gondwana, tilling the soil and herding goats. While this white guy had been in some nice, consensual relationship with another student—maybe; she had no way of knowing—she'd been at the mercy of the strongest shepherd in her village…

  The man who had violated her had been from her tribe, looking like her. But right now he she didn't hate him for what he'd done. Instead, she hated this yellow man, because yellows never suffered like she had. White girls and white boys lived on orderly planets while brown people lived on third-rate worlds like Terra Gondwana. Whites were the ones with the good educations, while brown people had to live from hand to mouth in the jungle. Memories of the hunger and the violence of her home planet flooded her mind. True, she had suffered at the hands of her own people, but so what? Those tormentors were only choking on their lack of privilege—just like she was now.

  Even though she was seething with hatred and envy, Shanti realized that she was thinking nonsense. Some white people had suffered just as much—and more—than she had. She knew for instance that fair-haired Lieutenant Halvorsen had lived through a similar ordeal. Somebody had violated her, too. Whiteness and privilege didn't necessarily go hand-in-hand. She knew it—but didn't care.

  A machine was manipulating her…

  Shanti remembered what the general had said. Think of good things. What has gone well today?

  Well, the general was a white man—sort of—and he'd taken the blindness away from her just hours ago. That was good. Still seething with anger, she remembered how good she felt when the general bowed over her and looked at her with his intense gray eyes.

  Shanti realized, thinking of the general stalled the hatred in her somewhat.

  She pulled on the engineer's jacket and dragged the man, who'd curled up into the fetal position, towards the exit.