The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Morris (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📕

No, Netmaster! None of the planets are inhabited. We’re not getting any radio signals, and there are no local heat emissions on any of the planets to indicate settlements or energy generation systems. We are the only living beings in this system.

Pleased, Kasfok brandished his mandibles. He retrieved the results from the scans and sensor data on a terminal on the wall of the meditation room. One look dashed the faint hopes he’d had of finding a new home for his species in the system. None of the planets was suitable for settlement by the Mendraki. There were indeed two planets orbiting within the habitable zone. Unfortunately for them, one was almost entirely lacking in atmosphere, and the other showed too high an oxygen content for his species to survive there. They’d have to keep looking.

Something in the jumble of data caught his attention. What’s this? he drummed on the communication thread.

Nothing unusual, Netmaster! An asteroid that’s on a course within the system. It’s probably an object from deep space that has been caught in the sun’s gravitational field. With the path it’s on, it will plunge into the sun before too long.

Go and inform the other Shipmasters! In a few pulses I will give the command to start the braking maneuver.

Shortly after, Kasfok entered the bridge of the fleet’s lead ship. The other Shipmasters were already on the screens, awaiting his instructions. While no pheromones could be transmitted via radio, it was almost possible to smell the various conflicting feelings. Each one was waiting with a communication limb poised on a thread. Kasfok’s drummed instructions would be translated into electrical impulses and transmitted to the recipient as vibrations of the communication thread. They would all be able to feel his words.

Not everyone was friendly to him and his web leadership. Kasfok knew that there were quiet vibrations demanding his replacement. No one had yet dared to express this in stronger vibrations, but the number of those who wanted to see a younger Netmaster at the top was increasing. Kasfok was well aware that some Shipmasters sympathized with this view. But now he would take the wind out of his critics’ webs! Under his leadership the greatest possible treasure had been found. He was the savior of the Mendraki and would go down in history as such!

Just as he was about to give instructions for a collective fleet maneuver, a vibration resonated through the communication thread. The other Shipmasters received it, too.

The asteroid! drummed remote scout Holmak. It is changing course!

Kasfok involuntarily emitted a pheromone cloud of surprise. How can an asteroid change course?

Now it’s heading for the inner planet, which is fiery and incapable of sustaining any life.

That wasn’t my question! Kasfok rebuked the remote scout. Even though he was afraid of the answer, he repeated his question. How can an asteroid suddenly switch course?

There must be... Holmak paused as if something in him prevented him from conveying the message. The asteroid is not an asteroid. Or, to drum it more clearly, it is probably a hollowed-out asteroid that has been transformed into a spaceship.

Netmaster Kasfok knew that this altered their circumstances tremendously. They were not alone in this system!

44th of Frien, 298

It is cold up here.

Kimikizu had taken the wind tunnel to the level just beneath the surface. While it was just as warm inside the hollowed-out asteroid as it was on the home world, she seemed to feel the bitter cold of the cosmic vacuum here. With her inner plumage fluffed out, she scurried through a short corridor leading from the wind tunnel to the hangar. Kimikizu now regretted her hasty decision to volunteer for the adventure. In the roost, she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes shut, even though she had an exciting flight ahead. That was probably the very reason she hadn’t been able to get any sleep.

She approached a double door and tapped a button with the tip of her wing, watching as the doors swung open. The hangar of the flying machines! She still had vivid memories of the first visit she’d made there, with her elementary school classmates. The machines had seemed huge to her, like steel gods, mainly because each had the shape of an Iks, just many times larger. Thus far, she’d only flown along once during her training, as part of a ship’s tour intended to familiarize the students with the machine’s controls.

Kimikizu entered the hangar, head tilted toward the ceiling, from where the metal gods looked down on her. It had just so happened that the Iks’ physical form had proven practical. The beak, for example, could accommodate a selection of sensors or weapons systems. The Iks were peaceful, but they had also experienced civil wars. While they now no longer had any external enemies, the Conqueror Caste still had significant influence and promoted weapons development. Kimikizu hoped they would never need them. In any case, the Explorers had assured everyone that there was no alien activity in this system.

“Here she comes at last, our bride of the wind!”

Kimikizu directed her beak in the direction of the voice. She recognized a group of Iks in uniform. One of them broke away from the group to approach her. Kimikizu wasn’t sure how to act around him. Bride of the wind. It was only the Navigators, not the Explorers, who used this title to address each other. It wasn’t an explicit insult, but it was unconventional.

She had already been warned that Explorers tended to behave in ways that challenged their narrow social norms. She guessed that this was how it had to be, flying ahead of the flock and thus spending a lot of time outside the protective community. In the long history of their kind, it had always been the Explorers who had set the course for months of wandering around the home world in search of fertile areas.

“Welcome to the flock,” he said by