Prelude

Good advice sometimes comes in very simple terms. "Her think you should go." Lily had a way of making simple, direct, statements, and this was certainly one of them. I wasn't even sure how the conversation had come up, other then in the quiet aftermath of a post 're-elect the Mayor to another four year term' shindig.

My first term had been, shall we say, eventful. In the four years since I'd first gotten elected Mayor of a little backwater mining colony, we'd fought wars against Loyalists, Reavers, and Machines, and lived to tell the tales.

We'd seen new lives come into the world, and old friends leave it. We'd watched a colony of barely three hundred fifty people grow to over fifteen hundred souls, thriving on a world that we had to update the terraforming ourselves to make it possible.

We'd seen the Independence movement sweep through the Rim worlds. Rising up, as half a dozen worlds declared their succession from the Alliance, then die back down as those same worlds either worked out some kind of truce with the vastly more powerful Alliance, or fell beneath that same unstoppable force.

We'd seen the Reavers flare up into violence then die out as quickly and violently as they'd come, leaving death and terror in their wake until that one, final, massive, battle, that ended their reign of terror. Now there were just scattered tribes, dieing out as Entropy ended their collective span.

And the machines. Those accursed machines. Designed to help rebuild after the first Unification War, then perverted into weapons by the self serving hardliners who still had factions interwoven into the fabric of the Alliance. They'd been a quiet scourge on at least half a dozen known worlds, and possibly many more unknown ones.

For the last few months though, we'd been able to pretend the Machines were gone. While we couldn't be sure they'd been eliminated, the last attack we could attribute to the weaponized von Neumann mining machines was almost four months back. Long enough to give us a sense that maybe, just maybe, they threat was gone.

The quiet, the stability, was why Lily thought I should go: Take Grandfather's offer of the Executive Officer position on Children of Earth and leave all this behind for one grand adventure. His offer had been standing for years. Literally. Long delayed, the ship was still at least a year from completion and the crew selection still not finalized. Grandfather had wanted me to serve as the ship's XO for at least the last five years, even knowing it was essentially a one way mission. While we could come back, the round trip was over a hundred standard years.

For all her being the fastest ship ever designed, the journey from 34 Tauri to Sol was a long one. Bound by the absolute limit of lightspeed. The crew would have the advantage of the most advanced hibernation systems ever designed, and a long time at relativistic speeds, but everyone the crew knew when the left would be long dead by the time they returned.

If they returned.

It was potentially the second greatest adventure Humanity would ever undertake. All contact with Earth that Was had been lost shortly after the first colony ships arrived in the 34 Tauri system hundreds of years ago. With all the struggles of trying to settle into Humanity's new home, our birthplace was almost forgotten. The stuff of legends. To this day, Earth that Was was spoken of as a mythical place, but none of us knew anything that wasn't in a history book.

Sure, there had been attempted contacts in the past. There were at least three documented cases of scientists in the pre-Alliance days trying to get a signal back to Earth, Luna, or Mars, with a high power comms maser. None of which ever heard a reply. Not that the reply would have come back within the lifetime of the person sending the signal. There were also at least two automated probes, neither of which ever reported home. System failures? Somethine ate them in Sol system? No one knew. But twenty years ago the Interworld Science Foundation had proposed the idea of a manned expedition back to Earth that Was. Humanity deserved to know what had become of their homeworld. In respose, half a dozen of the best naval architects in the 'Verse had submitted designs for consideration - should the project actually be funded. Of them, one showed actual promise.

Children of Earth was the magnum opus of Kawanishi Heavy Industry Ltd's most talented, and eccentric, designer. A massive ship that incorporated some of the most sophisticated drive and power technologies ever devised. She would take a crew of hundreds across the stars to Humanity's homeworld and do it in record time. If only she would be built.

With the Alliance being the political quagmire it was, and the years long Unification War, it was no wonder she'd taken a decade just to be approved in principal, then years more before construction could start after updating and approving the design. But she was being built. Now, roughly a year from completion, KHI, as the shipyard and secondary sponsor, and the ISF were trying to finalize the crew selection.

And Grandfather wanted me to go. Still.

We had turned him down before, Sabrina and I. But our reasons had changed over the last few years. The priorities that kept us on the Rim were changing as the people, and the worlds around us, changed. For the first time, I could see Sabrina was actually considering the offer. Uncle Elsoph himself had recommended her to be Chief Engineer: high praise from the man who'd designed most of the great ship himself. "I'm too old." he'd said. "Your Sabrina though. She knows. She understands."

"We'll think about it, Mei Mei" was all I could say. But we would. At length. It would be a huge decision, leaving our lives here behind. When we returned, Krenshar might still be alive. Or functional, rather, since he wasn't really 'alive' to begin with. But everyone else we knew? We'd be coming home to their grandchildren, assuming the mission was a success and we came home at all.

So much to consider. And all because Lily thought we should go.