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.