Final approach

Bringing Children of Earth out of her long hibernation was a complicated task, starting with getting the essential crew woken up so they, in turn, could wake up the rest of the crew and then see to the ship herself. AuroraBlue had submerged herself back into the Sled's Frame, leaving the Nora 'personality' visible to the crew. Or was it themselves? Were AuroraBlue and Blue fully separate personalities, or facets of the same intelligence? I didn't know. Ultimately, I didn't care. I took some small comfort in knowing they'd come with us, even if they were staying hidden from the rest of the crew.

As the crew woke up, I tried to make a point of at least dropping by for a couple of minutes to make sure each one was ok. I'd had the unique experience of being the last one to sleep. The feeling of being the only conscious Human being in the Deep Black between star systems. It was both awe inspiring and terrifying. Only to be followed, what seemed like moments later, by waking up alone in a silent and empty starship many light years from where I'd gone to sleep. I don't know if I'd ever have words to describe those feelings, but I knew that I didn't want anyone else to feel that profound sense of being alone that I'd experienced.

I spent a few minutes with each of the newly awakened crew, much as I had after they'd gone to sleep. None of them would ever know that part, of course. No one had seen me linger over the console of each tank and whisper a prayer for each of the sleeping occupants. Of course, I spent more time with some of the them than others. Sabrina, got more than a fair share of attention. I'd put her to sleep with a kiss and she woke up to another what seemed, to her, only moments later. "Gotta do that more often if this is how I wake up," she laughed, still recovering from hibernation.

Lieutenant Conner didn't get quite such an affectionate greeting when he woke up, but he did get the briefing on the late Captain Matthew Gill's untimely demise. He was a good man. A good soldier. He understood why I'd chosen to wake the ORCA's up along with the medical crew, well ahead of schedule. If he had any doubts about the circumstances of the loss he didn't say anything. His first concern was his own team, followed by his responsibilities to the rest of the crew. He'd disseminate the information on the command change to his team, as I would to the members of the crew who needed to know immediately. But for now, I wasn't telling people about the losses. They had too many other things on their minds.

It went on like that for the better part of a week. Crew coming out of could sleep as the Sled decelerated into Sol system. We could have done a simple direct vector for Earth, doing scans inbound and launching drones and survey boats as we got close, but that wasn't the plan. Children of Earth would take a roundabout course, looping Sol between the orbits of Venus and Mercury, before looping out near Mars, then back in towards Earth. It would add time, of course, but there were multiple reasons for taking a somewhat cautious approach.

The long loop also gave time for everyone to wake up and recover. And time for me to make a general announcement I'd been uneasy about since I'd woken up.

"Attention all hands. Welcome to Sol. I know I've already spoken to each of you, but this makes it official. We're still processing all the telemetry and communications traffic that was sent to us en-route, and you'll have access to your personal messages and all the public feeds as soon as they're parsed out of the datastream. There was a lot of of it, so please be patient.

Children of Earth is currently looping towards Earth that Was, where we will be taking up an initial orbit at Luna's trailing Lagrange point. Per our original mission profile, the Venus and Mars survey drones have already dispatched and the long range relay device is on course for Jupiter's orbit. Recon Crews, you will be dispatched as soon as Engineering's finished checking out your boats.

As some of you are already aware, the Hibernation chambers performed better than expected. However there were still some losses. A memorial service is scheduled before evening mess tomorrow for Astrographer, Byron Wolfe, Engineer, Sebastian Jackobs, and Captain, Matthew Gill."

I paused a moment to let that sink in. Many of the crew still hadn't heard of Gill, or their crewmates, untimely demise. There would be a sense of loss, even for the crew who hadn't been exceptionally fond of the Captain. More so for the members of the Engineering and Science teams who'd worked with Jackobs and Wolfe.

"Per our operational profile, I have assumed overall command of the ship and will be selecting someone to take over as my Executive Officer. In the meantime, we're proceeding with the mission as planned. You all know your jobs. There's a lot for us to do, so let's get to it. I'm going to try and maintain the same access policy I had as XO, so if anyone feels a need to speak with me directly you know where to find me.

Captain, out."

Saying that publicly, for the first time, felt a little strange. I'd already accepted my new responsibility as Captain and Mission Commander, but saying it to the entire crew made it official. For better or worse, I was their leader and they'd have to accept it.

Not that I was especially worried. I'd gotten along well with most of the crew. The only real personal friction had been with Matt Gill and a couple of his hand picked bridge officers. With him gone a couple of them might grouse, but it was unlikely they'd cause a real fuss. They may have shared Gill's disdain for Ground Force officers but we'd still managed to establish a professional working relationship.

The real issue that was worrying me was the traffic from home.

Part of the mission profile called for the command center back home to send us regular updates via a high powered communications laser. Moving at relativistic speeds, the signal would be attenuated and red-shifted so much we'd be picking it up as far infra-red. That put a cap on the bandwidth, which meant they'd have to pick and choose what to send us.

The crew had all put in personal picks, and Mission Control had people who's job was actually to make sure we got a good selection of entertainment, news, and digitized art. Then there were the personal correspondences. Letters and vids from home. Family, friends, random people who wanted to send a message to the people heading to Earth that Was. There was also a good deal of technical information in the ongoing communications. Science updates. New parameters to work with for our systems and research instruments. Results from the data we'd sent home on the way out. Finally, there were mission specific orders and purely military matters the science crew wasn't even authorized to know about.

There wasn't a lot of military information, but what there was of it was often classified Eyes Only and addressed to me and, or, Gill. The volume was small, as expected, but it was important.

The the datastream was supposed to be more or less continuous during our flight, at least until we'd reached a distance where the bandwidth had dropped to a point where it wasn't really useful. Our receivers were good, but not good enough to pick out a communications signal from dozens of light years away while we were going relativistic speeds ourselves. The speeds meant that the longer we were in flight, the longer it would take us to get any given signal. In theory we'd be getting updates long after we arrived, though even when we reached Sol system and could more easily train the receiver towards 34 Tauri, the bandwidth would be limited.

The thing was though, the signal had stopped.

There were several years worth of signals coming in at regular intervals, updating us as expected. But then, some four years after departure, they started to become intermittent with the transmissions from home becoming less and less frequent until stopping altogether. The final transmission arrived roughly seventeen years into the flight, well before turnover. Very much not to plan.

Only a handful of people were working with the signals from home and I'd asked them to, for now, keep knowledge of the signal loss under wraps. It was better to keep the crew focused on their mission rather than worrying about why the transmissions had stopped.

I knew where to look for answers though, finding them in the military status updates directed at the Sled's Alliance Officers.

The Machine attacks had gotten worse.

What had started as a series of skirmishes between the Alliance Military, or local Militia forces, against the combat drones built by the von Neumann Machines, had escalated to full blown war. Reading the reports, it appeared the war had not gone especially well. There were lists of dozens of Rim and Border worlds that had fallen to the machines. Beaumond. Jiangyin. Shadow. Athens. Dozens more. Mostly smaller colonies, fortunately, but the casualty numbers were horrifying. The last transmission indicated that the Machines had struck several Core worlds and Persephone was in danger of falling.

Command had stopped transmitting because they needed the resources to fight against the machines. Their final mandate to us: Complete your mission, but don't assume there will be a home to return to.

Not encouraging. But not entirely dim either. There was no indication that the Machines had sent an interstellar ship of their own to come after us at Sol, which meant we had several years at least before any such ship could arrive. Even if they did pursue, there was only a limited course window they could use, so we would have some warning at least if were inbound. If something was inbound.

It wasn't something I could think about quite yet. There was still too much detail to sift through from the backlogged communications. A full assessment of what the machines had been doing, and the likelihood of them pursuing our mission to Earth might not even be possible given the information we had. There were just to many factors to consider and far too little hard data.

Ultimately though, knowledge of the machine attacks in 34 Tauri put another burden on us. With the fourty thousand frozen embryos, Children of Earth could easily establish a new colony. It was never our primary mission, but it was long acknowledged that we might be establishing permanent residence on Earth or another of Sol's worlds. If the 34 Tauri system fell we might well be all that was left of Humanity.

But again, it wasn't something I could think about now. We had a lot of work ahead of us still. Whether we eventually stayed, or ran, or went home, were questions to answer after we'd completed our primary mission. For the time being, we needed to make it to Earth. To see if anyone had survived.

To finally come home.