The Long Dark

According to the Scientists, the Heliopause, where the outward flowing solar wind stalls against the inward streaming interstellar medium, is officially the edge of the system. Past that, you're in interstellar space. In a single star system like Sol, that boundary is at least easily defined if not always easy to identify. With 34 Tauri, it was a much different story. The interaction of five stars and half a dozen or so protostars made the heliopause less of a sphere and more of an amorphous blob. When you crossed it depended more on what vector you were taking out of the system than your distance from Bai Hu.

For us, crossing the Heliopause was a mission specific milestone. There were only a handful of us awake when the senior scientist declared we'd crossed the border and their observations would be done and transmitted in a matter of two more days. The rest of us would sleep shortly thereafter.

The order of those last entries into the hibernation tanks had been a point of discussion off and on for over a year. You'd think that it would have been settled long before it was actually going to happen, but that was the nature of such decisions. In the end, the last to sleep would be 'Brina, Captain Gill, Lieutenant Conner, Belize, then me. The Captain had wanted me to sleep before he did. When I pointed out the mission profile required me to oversee his entry into the tank, he insisted Conner remain awake to observe as well. I don't think he was actually being paranoid, as our working relationship was civil if not exactly friendly, but he was obviously uncomfortable.

Gill, understandably, wanted to make sure there were medical personnel on tap to assure he, the Captain, was put safely into cold sleep. He'd actually made noises about wanting the Flight Surgeon to put him to sleep himself, instead of Bel, though they'd been neither loud nor persistent. I'd actually have been happy with Bel watching the tank when I went into hibernation. But she'd already be asleep, trusting me to make sure things went smoothly before I trusted myself, in turn, to Nora.

I had to admit, I had mixed feeling with the announcement we'd crossed the Heliopause. Cold sleep wasn't the greatest thing on my mind. I'd gone through several dry runs already as part of training, as had we all. It wasn't exactly pleasant but it held no terror for me. I would go into the tank, deal with a few minutes of discomfort, then awaken to deal with a few minutes of disorientation. Possibly longer, according to some of the studies. I would be the last to sleep and the first to wake up. Trusting Nora with my life even more than anyone else on the crew.

That wasn't the issue.

We'd been getting further reports of Machine attacks for several weeks. The Alliance military was holding its own without much difficulty so far, but who knew how deeply dug in some of those Mother bots were? On some level it felt like we were running away from that particular problem, though there were plenty of people back home with the experience, and cunning, needed to end the threat. The Machines might have been part of what I was feeling, but they weren't the entirety of it.

There were things I was leaving behind that would be lost to time long before I returned. Optimistically, it was an 75 year mission. Minimum. The more conservative estimates had us in Sol system for at least a decade before returning to 34 Tauri. If we returned to 34 Tauri. If we ever went back, chances were good that no one we'd ever known would still be alive. The 'Verse would change while we stayed the same for much of the intervening decades.

I wasn't usually sentimental. But the notice that we'd passed the Heliopause and were about to enter the cold sleep stage of the mission brought it home that there were people I knew I would never see again. I'd said my good byes. We all had. But until that moment, it had been an abstract concept. Forever.

Lily and Krenshar might still be alive when we got home. Neither of them were organic. They didn't age the way we did. Same with Raids. And Blue, who wasn't even physical in the strictest sense. But the men and women we'd left behind? For their enkelkind, we would just be a footnote in a history book. Our memory lost to the Black.

Or maybe not.

* * *

"Not used to seeing the melancholy show, Sea. You ready for this?"

Bel's question wasn't unexpected. In the two days since I'd given Sabrina a loving kiss good night, and watched the Hibernation chamber cycle into operation, I'd shown the Zen calm I'd been long known for. It was the same when Gill, and then Conner, had gone into the tanks, leaving Belize and I the only two living beings awake in the vast Black between home and Sol.

"I'm ready, Sis. More letting the situation set in than feeling melancholy. You trust me to push the right buttons?"

She laughed then set down her tea. "Same thing isn't it? And if I didn't, do you think I'd be here?" I had to smile. She was right. She'd trusted me enough to come along on this mission, to leave everything and everyone she'd known behind to burn a whole through the Black into the unknown.

We all had. All four hundred thirty three people aboard Children of Earth had made that decision, to trust their lives to this ship and each other to be part of something bigger than any of us. There was huge cultural and scientific significance to the mission, yes, but it was also a great adventure. Probably the greatest in centuries.

But none of that changed what I was feeling. It was once said that the Reavers were just Men who'd stood at the edge of the Black for too long and lost their Humanity to it. It wasn't true, but the mythology had taken hold long before the Reavers had even appeared. Of the billions of people who called the 34 Tauri system home, the vast majority had never been off their birth world. It didn't matter that millions of people were in space at any given time, shuttling between colonies spread between five stars. The distance between those worlds was vast. The distance between stars in the 34 Tauri system vaster still. And the distance between star systems? It was more than a Human mind could absorb. According to our navigator, the closest we'd get to another star en route would be Hippocaros 31635. And even that was almost half a parsec from our course.

Numbers too big to process.

We both dragged out that last day longer than needed. I think Bel was more concerned for my well being during the time I'd be alone than anything else. It wouldn't even be a long time alone. A day, maybe two, depending on whether I wanted to enjoy the absolute solitude or not.

Sending Bel off to sleep though, was in some ways even more difficult than it had been with 'Brina. At least from a purely technical standpoint. While I knew these systems as well as anyone who wasn't an actual doctor, and I'd assisted with dozens of hibernations, this one was entirely in my hands. If Bel didn't wake up, it would be me that'd killed her. Wasn't a matter of consequence, so much as being personal.

When the hibernation chamber cycled Belize to sleep, I was as alone as any person could be. Children of Earth was still accelerating at a steady eighty meters per second per second. Bai Hu, and the rest of the stars that made up 34 Tauri were just dim points of light in our wake. A little brighter than the background stars, and a bit red shifted, you could still see them with the naked eye. But soon, no eyes would remain awake in the Black to look back.

There were still some duties I had to take care of before I went into cold sleep myself. Sabrina had already worked her magic on the Bussard Ramscoop, a vast electromagnetic construct that would, in theory anyway, scoop up the tenuous interstellar medium and funnel it into our fuel tanks. It worked. After a fashion. The ramscoop wasn't effective enough to recover all of our fuel, at least given the performance so far, but it would make life a good deal easier for the trip home.

It was something else Nora would have to take care of. Along with the drives and the power piles and the hibernation tanks. Which was the next thing I needed to check before I could go to sleep. We'd all checked and triple checked the tanks in the days leading up to this. But I needed to make the last check myself. I trusted Nora. I had to. But there was something oddly comforting in personally checking the integrity and status of each of the chambers. Something personal in spending a few moments lingering over each sleeping crew mate, and more than a few moments over the few here with me who mattered deeply to me.

Deep in the Black, absolutely alone, I had a few last dispatches to get off to home before going to sleep myself.

Most of the final communications was simple logistical housekeeping, final status and condition reports, a bit of Science, and my official log indicating the completion of this stage of the mission. I wouldn't be awake then the acknowledgement came back. Interplanetary postal mail was faster than our communications at this point. We were that far from home. But there were still a few personal messages I needed to get back.

General,

I'm sending this message to you and Jin in the hope that you never need to use the information enclosed. I know Jin was just a kid when you helped me assemble the crowbars, General, but I'm fairly certain he'll remember a twelve ton osmium spear with a pulse drive on the end. We built six of the things and we only used the one to crack the second Mother Bot on Hale's Moon.

Left a right fine crater, it did.

In any case, I had to downcheck on of them about three years ago, but the remaining four are still on station. I'm sending along partial control keys to take control of the crowbars. They're the kind of weapon the Alliance wants to pretend can't be made, because people would panic if they know how easy it was to construct a city killer with a surplus pulse drive and a big hunk of metal.

With the Machines on the move again, I figured you could use the crowbars if it came down to it. Between the key components I'm sending here and a few of the records I left behind with Genni, you and Jin should be able to piece together where I parked the crowbars and the command codes you'll need to get them running. Puzzles may not be your thing, but you know how I am about securing assets and these are ones I don't want getting into the wrong hands.

If the 'Verse is kind, you'll never have to use them. If it's not, I can't think of anyone better than the two of you to use them right.

I'd steal Duncan's old line and say Stay Lucky, but this isn't about luck. It's about being smart.

Make me proud.

-S

I embedded the partial keys in the message and wrapped it in Jin and General's private keys. They should be able to figure out the rest of it from what I'd left behind. Originally, I'd planned to send this to Genni herself, so she could hold the crowbars in reserve in case they were ever needed: like the Epic Weapon left in hiding in an old Fantasy story. Only the crowbars weren't so epic, and this was no fantasy.

The directional array would put the signal on target when it arrived, crawling across the Black at light speed. It was only a matter of time.

With my final duties taken care of I took one last walk through Children of Earth and headed to my hibernation chamber, checking on sleeping friends and turning off the lights on my way. Part of me felt desperately alone: the feeling Belize had seen as melancholy. But part of me was absolutely at peace. Perfect solitude. I was, if just for a moment, alone with the Universe.

And then it was time. Settling into the hibernation tank, fastening the monitors in place, the pinpricks of the IV lines and internal probes seating themselves. The lid coming down over the coffin-like chamber, Nora's smooth voice going through the checklist with me, double checking everything according the the procedure we'd been over a dozen times before. The lights dimming, then the world itself starting to fade as the darkness started to take hold.

No fear. Just the realization that I was going to be asleep for a long time, and when I woke up the universe would have changed.

"We're all yours Nora. See you in Sol."

"Understood. Ship's systems are nominal. Hibernation systems are nominal. Sleep well, Little Dragon."

"Little Dragon? Wait. What?"

And then the darkness closed in, and Nora was gone.

The Plane of the Ecliptic

Children of Earth's course would take her on a roundabout tour through the core worlds, then a slingshot past White Tiger to send us up over the plane of the ecliptic and out on course for Sol. With the raw performance we had on tap, the Sled could have slewed the nose around towards Sol and just punched it. But that wasn't the way such things were done and for good reason.

34 Tauri was, technically, still 'young' as far as stellar systems went. There was still a fair amount of debris slinging around the system from the system's formative eons. There were still a surprisingly large number of uncharted, kilometers wide, objects to run into vectoring between worlds. Even now, it wasn't unheard of to lose a transport to a random rock that no one'd ever seen. That was until the hapless transport smacked into it in the Black. It was one of the reasons that prospecting was still a decent way to make a living.

It was also one reason the Sled was on a course though well charted space with a lot of performance in reserve. Even with the armor plating over her leading edges, hitting a rock in 34 Tauri would make for a very short mission. With the acceleration she was capable of, the only safe route was to hold back until we were well clear of the ecliptic and starting the curve towards Sol.

Still, even pulling 2G, barely 1/4 what she could do at full burn, we were doing nearly a 10th lightspeed by the end of the second week. Blink, and we crossed the width of a planet. And with the main body of 34 Tauri behind us, we could finally pour on the thrust. Across a few hours, with Sabrina carefully watching her Engineering monitors, the Sled's acceleration quadrupled. While my own Matagi, Wave Equation, could generate considerably more delta V, the Sled would hold this thrust until reaching turnover half way between 34 Tauri and Sol. By then we'd be so close to lightspeed the universe would effectively have stopped from our point of view.

But no one would be there to see it except Nora.

The two weeks between departure and Full Burn hadn't been completely uneventful. Final tests of the drives. Final tests of the power piles. Getting a slew of research readings done and sending them back to flight control before we got out of range. Putting the rest of the crew to sleep. Getting the last messages in or out. Making the final decision on who'd be last to sleep.

Physical objects couldn't go faster than light. Nothing physical could. But the communications network that made up the Cortex wasn't entirely physical. How'd it work? Do you have a PHd level Physics degree, and a few hours for me to find someone who can explain it? Describing the system itself, with its network of relay's scattered around the 'Verse was straightforward. In that regard, it was like the RF Comms that went as far back as Earth that Was. Relay stations. Signal boosters. Repeaters. Transceivers. Store and forward servers. Datastreams flowing through networks of faster than light virtual particles. Using the Cortex was easy. Explaining it? Not so much.

With our position over the plane of the ecliptic, and accelerating rapidly, we slipped out of relay range fairly quickly. But that didn't mean we were out of communication. Children of Earth had a fairly extensive communications suite in addition to her elaborate scientific and navigational sensor arrays. Even with out the Cortex, we had radio, maser, and laser communications that could, when needed, reach across interstellar distances. Unfortunately, they would do so limited by lightspeed. It would be decades after we reached Sol before the folks at home knew about it. By then, the mission would have long before succeeded, or failed, and we'd be on our way home. Or not.

Being out of range of the Cortex relays though, meant our last communications with Flight was more or less a series of one way communications. Like writing letters rather than having a conversation. Though some of those communications were interesting. In the classic Chinese meaning of the term.

Take, for example, the message we got from Imrhien a couple days after we slipped beyond relay range.

She'd sent it to me directly, but it was there for all of us, and it effectively started out with "Hi, guys, I'm pregnant. No. Really." She didn't say how far along it was, or whether she knew if it was a boy or a girl or twins, or whatever, and she didn't say who the father was. But she really didn't need to. We all knew. Ultimately, we were all happy for her. One of us, at least, would leave a legacy beyond a footnote in a history book.

There were more like that. Many more. By now, though, we were down to a handful of scientists and about a third of the operations crew still awake. Maybe sixty people out of the Sled's compliment of four hundred thirty three. Those that were asleep would miss the chance to respond but would awaken to some final words from a home they might never see again. A care package across the Black.

The personal notes were really just a fraction of the communications that streamed to the Sled as we burned further into the Black. The Sciences team was sending back a continuous stream of deep space astrophysics and celestial navigation information. For some types of research, there was a major advantage to having a big fast ship with a massive sensor array clawing its way across the Black above the 34 Tauti system. Some research required perspective.

The Engineering traffic tapered off quickly after the first week, then flared again briefly when we went to full burn. Telemetry that essentially said "Yes, the Sled works. What were you expecting?" Honestly, I think the most important messages that came and went every day to or from Engineering were between 'Brina and Elsoph. My beloved 'crazy uncle' was seeing his magnum opus fulfil her mission. And aboard, his more or less adopted 'Little girl' was in charge of his 'Big girl.'

Sadly, none of us expected him to live long enough to see her reach Sol. Certainly not long enough to get the message that we'd arrived. In fact, if the mission went to profile, Children of Earth would be on her way home long before the signal from Sol crawled across the Black to reach Flight Control.

If it went to profile.

What we hadn't expected was a communication from High Command directed to the Sled's military officers. While there were some experienced military personnel aboard, this was hardly a military mission and a secured classified communication wasn't our usual fare.

The captain brought a handful of the senior flight officers into the briefing room to disseminate the gist of the transmission: The Machines were back.

It had been a few years since the last time anyone had encountered the weaponized von Neumann machines that had plagued several Rim worlds. Originally designed as simple self-replicating mining machines, or complexes of them, really, since there were a whole set of specialized designs, they'd been weaponized by a Black Ops unit under Hardliner influence. One of Uncle Elsoph's creations turned into a weapon of terror and unleashed on an unsuspecting 'Verse.

We'd fought the machines and won, at least on the small scale. Hale's Moon. Blackburne. Carsten's World. Several others. Those involved had always wondered if we'd gotten them all. Whether the "Loyalists" had dispatched even more of the things, or whether some of them had reached the stage of launching Seeders of their own. We couldn't know. At least until now.

The news of simultaneous machine attacks on three worlds, two in the Border region, one on the Rim, came as an unpleasant surprise. Where the original incidents had been largely covered up in the Media, the latest attacks had been against well populated areas rather than tiny Rim colonies. It wasn't the kind of thing that could, or would, stay quiet for long. Worse, there was a distinct implication in the wave that they were expecting more attacks on more worlds even further in-system.

Captain Gill's reaction was not entirely surprising. "It is our duty as Alliance Officers to return and assist."

I resisted the urge to beat him senseless for suggesting we abandon our mission over a classified sitrep, and managed a polite "Captain. With all due respect, it's just a SitRep. There's nothing in there ordering us back to base." To my slight surprise, the Navigation and Operations Officers both appeared to agree with me, and, after a brief discussion between the dozen or so officers privy to the report, Gill agreed to get clarification from Flight Control before ordering the Sled turned around and go back to Ariel. He did, however, order the drives brought back to standby until we were sure.

He also made a point of ordering me to his office after the meeting to, once again, call me on the carpet for daring to disagree with him. It reminded me in many ways of some of the amusingly unpleasant incidents from childhood. Being called to the Principal's office for daring to disagree with a teacher, but knowing full well that I'd been right and they'd been wrong. It even had the same feel of 'bruised ego' I'd seen in them so many years ago, and their not so subtle reminders that whether or not I was the daughter of a privileged family I didn't have the right to challenge someone in authority.

I knew this story, but he also knew I was right. I hadn't even brought up the reason I thought he wanted to turn back: that he'd seen a chance to be seen as a Hero for returning to a crisis, rather than burning across the Black into the pages of history.

It took a couple days for Flight to get confirmation back to us, but their answer was exactly what I'd expected. Children of Earth was to continue on her mission. High Command was already mobilizing forces to deal with the machine incursions, and continuing on to Sol was our one and only priority. I felt vindicated, and Gill, ever the politician, accepted our updated orders as if he'd never suggested we turn back.

So there we were. Tearing a great gaping hole in the Black while back in the 34 Tauri system, the Machines were once again making their presence known.

Given our success fighting the machines before, I wasn't surprised as they contacted Bel, Sabrina, and me, for more detailed information on our experiences. The core infection 'Brina'd developed had been successful in a couple of cases, and my Crowbar technique was equally effective, if a good deal more disruptive.

We passed on our contacts as well. People who'd successfully fought the Machines on the Rim and who's input would be valuable now. At least the ones we figured would be willing to put their dislike for the Machines over their personal dislike for the Alliance.

But it was very quickly becoming someone else's problem. Every second, we got farther away. And, ultimately, it seemed unlikely the Machines would be able to stand against the combined might of the Alliance military. If a handful of colonials on remote Rim worlds could destroy half a dozen Mother Bots, it stood to reason that it would be a piece of cake for an Alliance regiment with a Cruiser for support.

Soon. Very soon. It would all be behind us. Literally. The last of us would be asleep and 34 Tauri would just be a few points of red-shifted light in our wake. Someone else would handle the Machines.

We had our own mission.