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Author Topic: A Spartan By Any Other Name - Chapter V - It Takes Two, Baby  (Read 2011 times)

Offline jokerman

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A Spartan By Any Other Name - Chapter V - It Takes Two, Baby
« on: September 24, 2009, 05:58:44 PM »
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The following story is copyrighted material and all rights belong solely to the author.  Any reproduction or republication of any or all of this publication without the explicit and expressed written consent from the author is strictly forbidden.
</boring stuff>


“Two Suns!” the cadet blurted out.  He realized that there wasn’t another person behind him; there was a second sunrise.  Two suns, two shadows.  With the rushing from the hibernation chamber and the anticipation of his first assignment, it had not occurred to the cadet to just look out of a window when he was aboard ship.  As he thought about it, he didn’t remember seeing a window.  The blast shields were in position for good reason.

“Watch out for the blue one, it’s a killer”, said the commander.  “Don’t let its apparent size fool you, though.  It may look small from this distance but it is really a blue supergiant.  It’s one of the stars in the local cluster along with the red giant that already came up.  Matter of fact, Purgatory doesn’t even orbit the blue one and it still looks almost the size of Sol back on Earth.  Soon, it won’t be safe out here and we’ll have to retreat back into the caves.  It’s a good thing you got here when you did.  ‘Big Blue’ is nothing to play with.  Get caught outside at the wrong time of day and you’re done.  The UNSC info on it is off, though.  They list it as a red ‘and’ blue supergiant.”

“A variable star…” the cadet said slowly, still staring in disbelief at the second rising sun.  But it wasn’t just the fact that there were two suns rising on this inhospitable and alien planet that overwhelmed the cadet, it was the danger that the newcomer posed.  

The red giant had risen and was just above and to the left of the impending menace.  The red sun was visually stunning.  It looked bigger and redder than the largest harvest moon that he had ever seen on Earth.  It took almost the entire field of view of his visor.  But even at an orbital distance several times that of Earth, the red demanded respect and baked Purgatory relentlessly.

But the red giant was just a whisper compared to the blue.  The blue was more than ten times hotter and tens of thousands of times brighter than the yellow dwarf of Earth.  The power that it screamed into the sky was unyielding.  The cadet’s visor could filter nearly 100% of harmful invisible rays and visible light itself if needed but he still felt the skin on his face tingle and burn.  The state of the art UNSC adaptive visor was no match for the hairlike sliver of the blue peeking over one of the rock formations surrounding the compound.

The red titan in the sky would extend past the orbit of Venus back home and would make Sol look like a pea next to it but its size was nothing compared to the blue.  And at such an extreme distance that the blue seemed smaller than the sun that the cadet had known as a child, it was still a killer.  The concept further impressed upon the cadet just how small, insignificant, and fragile he really was.  And he also realized why Purgatory was a dead planet.

“What did you say?” said the commander.

The cadet broke his eyes from the rising suns realizing that he blurted out something without thinking.  Not wanting to make any more mistakes, he turned to face the commander.  It was only then that he noticed the pattern in the layout of the compound.  The few supplies were arranged in linear fashions along the ground.  Even the commander, the guard, and his initial contact on Purgatory were positioned strategically in the compound amongst the shade of the protruding rocks.  The cadet had only thought of the rock formations as a camouflage for the compound, a way to hide out of sight from the Covenant.  He realized that the compound wasn’t there only as a safe haven from enemy eyes but also from the onslaught of ‘Big Blue’, as the commander called it.  The rocks grew out of the ground as several thick, wide shards that reached at least ten meters into the sky at varying angles.  The outcroppings gave a small refuge, some sparse shaded protection from its burning blue fury at different parts of Purgatory’s day.  Protection for everything except the cadet himself, that is.  He was beginning to make his second shadow.

“A variable star, sir”, the cadet answered.

“And what is a ‘variable star’ cadet?”

“It’s a star that changes in brightness and in this case type and color.  Contracting and getting hotter and brighter as a blue; expanding, dimming, and cooling off as a red.  It can do this many times in its relatively short life”.  Looking back over his shoulder the cadet absentmindedly said, “The eternal struggle, red vs blue.”


« Last Edit: September 25, 2009, 07:43:50 PM by jokerman »

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