I found myself spending a great deal of time in one of the Sled's observation blisters gazing out at Earth. Somewhat surprising, actually. Considering all the time I'd spent in the Black in and out of orbit around the worlds in the 34 Tauri system, you'd have thought I'd grow jaded at the sight of a planet from space. Especially from high orbit, where surface details tended to blur through atmosphere and distance.
Earth wasn't even the prettiest world I'd seen. I could think of several planets back home that were nicer to look at. But there was something deep inside that saw this damaged world with a sense of longing. This world out of legend was Home. I could feel it. Something in the very core of my being, something down at the genetic level, wanted to feel that native gravity, breath the air our kind evolved in.
Soon. Very soon.
It had been three weeks since Sabrina made her bid to land at the Airship base in the Northern British Isles, and two since our first recon teams had set foot on Earth's soil. She was still bouncing but, like quite a few others aboard Children of Earth, she was getting impatient to see Earth for herself. Or, in her case, to see the airships herself. I felt it too. The impatience. The genetic level longing for Home.
Fortunately, or perhaps not, depending on the personal level of impatience, the Medical team was backing up the drawn out process of landing and making first contact. While we'd all been through an extensive, and somewhat unpleasant, decontamination process before leaving 34 Tauri, it was inevitable that we'd brought some pathogens along with us. We didn't want to repeat ancient history and introduce disease vectors that had evolved on some other world back to Earth. Plus, there was the very real possibility that new strains had evolved on Earth during our long absence.
It really wouldn't make a lot of sense to travel across forty light years only to lose half our crew to a lethal descendant of the common cold.
Ultimately though, contaminating Earth was more of a concern than being contaminated in return. Knowing the possibility existed, the entire crew had been implanted with a newer model of the biofilter system I'd had in my hip since the Unification War. It was possible to overwhelm it, of course, but it could do a good job of neutralizing a broad range of toxins and pathogens we were likely to encounter. I'd replaced my original a number of times over the years and it had saved my skinny ass on more than one occasion. When it came to biologicals, they had more to fear from us than we did from them.
Unfortunately, being smart about recontact was why it was taking so long. We also needed to get close up observations of language, culture, social interactions, modes of dress, the political and religious climates, level and extent of technology, and a dozen other data points the anthropologists could go on about for hours.
While we were looking at several potential first contact sites, Sabrina's airship base was turning out to be one of the better candidates. The language had drifted quite a bit over the centuries, but was still intelligible, more or less, as something in the English family spoken commonly back home. My Uncle would have been speaking it like a native in a matter of minutes, that was his gift, but the rest of us would take a good bit of practice to only have an accent.
Styles of dress were even more variable than language. Fashion was ephemeral, though perhaps less so on Earth now that their resources appeared somewhat limited. With the exception of certain local cultures, or where the practicality outweighed aesthetics, fashion changed far more rapidly than language. While we didn't have any local history to go on, we did have imagery from dozens of locations and up close observations from our primary landing candidates.
The locals by the airship base wore styles that wouldn't have been entirely out of place on half a dozen worlds in the 34 Tauri system. Kind of a cross between Persephone Nobility, Newhall Back Forty, and something from an Earth that Was history book from the barely industrial days. Belize and Sabrina both seemed to appreciate the women's styles, even if I thought the idea of being laced into something they called a "corset" was unpleasant.
"You clean up well" Imrhien had once said to me. And I did. I just preferred a personal style dictated by practical concerns rather than someone else's idea of what I looked good in. If I couldn't fight in, why was I wearing it? Some voices I trusted said it'd be OK and others said they'd enjoy the view. Still, doesn't looking good in a corset require having a chest to fill it out?
The landing wasn't the only thing on my mind though. I'd spent weeks slowly digging through the communications that had come in from Mission Control on Ariel during the long flight to Sol. We'd all received our fair share of personal communications from home: Friends and loved ones left behind. Mission updates from colleagues at various research institutions. Random fan mail from school children to MP's to at least one rather odd stalker.
Including the operational updates and having to go through the Eyes Only messages destined for the late Captain Gill, and I had a metrischen Boot geladen of information to sort through. The sheer volume had hidden a communication I wish I'd seen weeks ago.
The message, from General, started out "By the time you read this, we'll probably all be dead." Not promising.
"Things have gotten ugly the last few months. We've been working with the 'Purple Bellies and the other local Militias, helping them fight those Gorram freak machines. Used up the first two crowbars on MacLaran's Drift and Colony Brandt. Sab's virus did a number on a couple waves, left 'em running into walls are tunneling in circles if they didn't just lay down. Took out a couple mothers with it too, 'least until they coded up some sort of defense.
We're going to use the last crowbar on the nest here. One of Sam's sapper teams thinks they've got it pinned down about two thousand meters into the rock, hundred fifteen kilometers out of town.
The damn drones have been probing town last two weeks. Other day, swarm of them came up out of the old J mines. Damn near overwhelmed the militia here. Gang of them had Jin pinned down over near the maintenance garage and none of us could get into position to back him up. 'Till Raids waded in.
Seana, you should have seen her. Moving so Gorram fast she was just a metal blur. Waded into the pack and started chewing them up and spitting 'em out like a shredder. Jin got his ass out of there, but before my squad could get to Raids, one of the big crawler jobs got to her and she had too many of those damn wasps on her to get clear.
Took it out with a slug from the railgun, but not before they busted her up pretty bad.
Jin managed to save her core from the scrapped chassis. Got her laid out in the shop and swears he's not coming out until she's walking and talking and killing shit again for our side.
Lot of folk were scratching their heads when you declared her Sentient and part of the colony. You were right though. Willing to fight with us against her own kin.
We'll hold the fort. Give you something to come home to.
General."
Raids. A Machine. Probably the most advanced Anthro model the mother bots could produce. Sophisticated enough to support a full AI like a modified KM series Mechanoid. The only Machine ever to ask for asylum. To become one of us.
Maybe it was separation from the Mother Bot that had built her on Blackburne, before the local militia wrecked the Mother and Reavers subsequently trashed the colony. Maybe it was tampering with the core programming, or exposure to Blue, or just a natural result of an AI capable core left to its own devices.
It didn't matter. I'd seen her Ghost and given her the chance to become one of us. A person. And she'd made me proud. They all had. But forty light years away, and as many years too late, I could only whisper a prayer to the memory.
Machine with a Ghost
Step freely into Harm's Way
You have made me proud
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Target acquisition
Finding a landing site for teams going to Luna or Mars was easy in principle. There was no one there. Where the teams set down could be based entirely on logistical and science concerns. Which former colony site looked most likely to have something interesting? Which was safest? What gave the best backdrop for a postcard home? Balance out those factors, and selecting the best spot was easy. You could settle it with a coin toss. Asking the same question about Earth was considerably more difficult.
The Anthropology mavens at the Interworld Science Foundation, and a dozen major universities, had compiled an extensive set of first contact protocols. Or recontact protocols, really. The problem was it was all theoretical. There hadn't been an actual first contact situation since some time in the 20th century. For us, though, it would all be very real. It had been over five hundred years since the Exodus and it was inevitable that our cultures had diverged. Even amongst the worlds of the Alliance, there was cultural divergence. Ariel was as different from Sihnon as Beaumonde was from MacLaren's Drift. From what we'd been able to gather from our recon drones and orbital observation, the cultures of Earth were at least as variable as anything between the worlds of the 34 Tauri system. The language was even more divergent than what we were used to. At least from what little we'd been able to pick up with close approaches. Not a real surprise really, given they didn't have the Cortex to disseminate information and cultural influences between widely separated populations. But it made things all that much harder.
Our recon drones had been doing most of the heavy lifting so far. With the Sled still relatively far from Earth, mostly to minimize the chance of them seeing us from the ground, the small remotely controlled drones were the only way for us to get close up reconnaissance of Earth's surface. What made close in observation possible was the active camouflage surface that covered each of them.
Closely related to the ThermOptic sneak suits I'd used on intrusion ops and the active camouflage on the hull of some of our landers, it rendered whatever was behind it effectively invisible. At least up to a point. You weren't silent, even with active damping, you'd still cast a shadow, and there were situations where you couldn't match the background well enough for every possible observer to make the illusion complete, but it did the job well enough. With careful piloting and the drone's on-board expert system, it was possible to make close up observations of the people on the ground.
Those observations were how we'd learned that the language had diverged in different areas, and the cultures had changed quite a bit depending on where you looked.
Most of the crew had been looking over the recon information from Earth. Whether they were part of a contact team or not, everyone was forming an opinion about where our first contact should take place. But none of them were quite so enthusiastic about it as Sarina was.
"I know where we're going to land. Where we have to land!" She started, swirling into my office with a portable display in her hands, showing the kind of energy that I'd only ever seen before in Uncle Elsoph. I actually had to suppress a giggle. Her energy was infectious and this was the first time she'd shown an actual preference.
"Slow down, love. Breathe. You're channeling Lily. Where is it you think we have to land?"
She did a double take, blushed, then slowed down, bringing up an image on my wall screen: initially a low orbital view of what had once been known as the British Isles. Within a moment, the view started to zoom in, like dropping from orbit at a very high delta V, until we were looking at a village nestled into the side of a mountain somewhere in the Highlands of what had once been Scotland. "Here. We need to make first contact here. And this is why," she said, then paused to slew the image around to a low level view from one of the recon drones.
Filling the image was, well, I wasn't exactly sure what it was. An air vehicle of some type? There was a partially enclosed framework slung from netting beneath a large blunt-ended cylinder. I could identify what looked like control planes for pitch and yaw and a set of large diameter propellers like they still used on some light aircraft. It appeared to be tied down to a mooring platform that was smaller than it was. After a moment, 'Brina pulled back the view to show two similar devices on neighboring platforms, the whole thing a couple hundred meters from the village proper.
"It's a . . . Um. What is it, 'Brina?" I asked with an amused giggle.
"It's an Airship, Sea. It's a Gorram Airship! Not just one, but three of them! We've got to land here. Seriously." I don't think I'd ever seen her quite this bouncy before. She was like Elsoph trying to describe a newly invented piece of kit, or Lily with a fresh box of candy. She wasn't just excited; she was actually bouncing.
"You know it's not entirely up to me? Ok. So maybe it is. But you know I'm not going to be arbitrary about this. I'm going to have to talk to to the Science guys before I give the go ahead. And, like it or not, we're not going to be the first ones down." I held up a hand, waving it playfully at the first start of her objection. "This isn't some old Cortex video where the Captain and their senior staff go to the surface first. Wherever we set down, it'll be a couple of the Anthropologists with an ORCA escort first. OK?"
Sabrina gave me that look, then laughed. "I know, I know. But seriously. This is where we've got to go. Even if we're not going to get there first. Promise you'll bring it up?"
I promised, and did, a couple days later at the next staff meeting. Sabrina's suggestion prompted a lively debate on the subject, even more so when the imaging team showed more of those lighter than air vehicles in flight over several areas of what had once been the British Isles and Northern Europe.
Compared to the various sailing craft we'd seen on the surface, the airships were a good deal faster and seemed to have a surprisingly good payload for their size. Near as we could tell, they were steam powered and used some sort of mostly smokeless liquid for fuel. Sabrina was practically begging the Science team to land at the airship base we'd spotted.
Strangely, we hadn't seen many other steam vehicles. Or steam powered anything for that matter. A few large tractor like machines on the surface. Some large surface boats. What was probably a factory or mill of some kind in a couple of scattered locations. But overall, there just didn't seem to be used much.
It was another question we'd have to answer once we'd gotten to the surface. And, ultimately, Sabrina got her wish. We'd send down several teams in different locations but Site Number One would be a small village in what was once the Highlands of Scotland, where the Airships docked.
The Anthropology mavens at the Interworld Science Foundation, and a dozen major universities, had compiled an extensive set of first contact protocols. Or recontact protocols, really. The problem was it was all theoretical. There hadn't been an actual first contact situation since some time in the 20th century. For us, though, it would all be very real. It had been over five hundred years since the Exodus and it was inevitable that our cultures had diverged. Even amongst the worlds of the Alliance, there was cultural divergence. Ariel was as different from Sihnon as Beaumonde was from MacLaren's Drift. From what we'd been able to gather from our recon drones and orbital observation, the cultures of Earth were at least as variable as anything between the worlds of the 34 Tauri system. The language was even more divergent than what we were used to. At least from what little we'd been able to pick up with close approaches. Not a real surprise really, given they didn't have the Cortex to disseminate information and cultural influences between widely separated populations. But it made things all that much harder.
Our recon drones had been doing most of the heavy lifting so far. With the Sled still relatively far from Earth, mostly to minimize the chance of them seeing us from the ground, the small remotely controlled drones were the only way for us to get close up reconnaissance of Earth's surface. What made close in observation possible was the active camouflage surface that covered each of them.
Closely related to the ThermOptic sneak suits I'd used on intrusion ops and the active camouflage on the hull of some of our landers, it rendered whatever was behind it effectively invisible. At least up to a point. You weren't silent, even with active damping, you'd still cast a shadow, and there were situations where you couldn't match the background well enough for every possible observer to make the illusion complete, but it did the job well enough. With careful piloting and the drone's on-board expert system, it was possible to make close up observations of the people on the ground.
Those observations were how we'd learned that the language had diverged in different areas, and the cultures had changed quite a bit depending on where you looked.
Most of the crew had been looking over the recon information from Earth. Whether they were part of a contact team or not, everyone was forming an opinion about where our first contact should take place. But none of them were quite so enthusiastic about it as Sarina was.
"I know where we're going to land. Where we have to land!" She started, swirling into my office with a portable display in her hands, showing the kind of energy that I'd only ever seen before in Uncle Elsoph. I actually had to suppress a giggle. Her energy was infectious and this was the first time she'd shown an actual preference.
"Slow down, love. Breathe. You're channeling Lily. Where is it you think we have to land?"
She did a double take, blushed, then slowed down, bringing up an image on my wall screen: initially a low orbital view of what had once been known as the British Isles. Within a moment, the view started to zoom in, like dropping from orbit at a very high delta V, until we were looking at a village nestled into the side of a mountain somewhere in the Highlands of what had once been Scotland. "Here. We need to make first contact here. And this is why," she said, then paused to slew the image around to a low level view from one of the recon drones.
Filling the image was, well, I wasn't exactly sure what it was. An air vehicle of some type? There was a partially enclosed framework slung from netting beneath a large blunt-ended cylinder. I could identify what looked like control planes for pitch and yaw and a set of large diameter propellers like they still used on some light aircraft. It appeared to be tied down to a mooring platform that was smaller than it was. After a moment, 'Brina pulled back the view to show two similar devices on neighboring platforms, the whole thing a couple hundred meters from the village proper.
"It's a . . . Um. What is it, 'Brina?" I asked with an amused giggle.
"It's an Airship, Sea. It's a Gorram Airship! Not just one, but three of them! We've got to land here. Seriously." I don't think I'd ever seen her quite this bouncy before. She was like Elsoph trying to describe a newly invented piece of kit, or Lily with a fresh box of candy. She wasn't just excited; she was actually bouncing.
"You know it's not entirely up to me? Ok. So maybe it is. But you know I'm not going to be arbitrary about this. I'm going to have to talk to to the Science guys before I give the go ahead. And, like it or not, we're not going to be the first ones down." I held up a hand, waving it playfully at the first start of her objection. "This isn't some old Cortex video where the Captain and their senior staff go to the surface first. Wherever we set down, it'll be a couple of the Anthropologists with an ORCA escort first. OK?"
Sabrina gave me that look, then laughed. "I know, I know. But seriously. This is where we've got to go. Even if we're not going to get there first. Promise you'll bring it up?"
I promised, and did, a couple days later at the next staff meeting. Sabrina's suggestion prompted a lively debate on the subject, even more so when the imaging team showed more of those lighter than air vehicles in flight over several areas of what had once been the British Isles and Northern Europe.
Compared to the various sailing craft we'd seen on the surface, the airships were a good deal faster and seemed to have a surprisingly good payload for their size. Near as we could tell, they were steam powered and used some sort of mostly smokeless liquid for fuel. Sabrina was practically begging the Science team to land at the airship base we'd spotted.
Strangely, we hadn't seen many other steam vehicles. Or steam powered anything for that matter. A few large tractor like machines on the surface. Some large surface boats. What was probably a factory or mill of some kind in a couple of scattered locations. But overall, there just didn't seem to be used much.
It was another question we'd have to answer once we'd gotten to the surface. And, ultimately, Sabrina got her wish. We'd send down several teams in different locations but Site Number One would be a small village in what was once the Highlands of Scotland, where the Airships docked.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
