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.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The doorstep of Earth
From our vantage point, seeing Earth out the observation ports and on the main displays, it was hard to be patient. In the short time we'd been here we'd learned much about the homeworld we'd left behind. Where some thought we'd find a barren husk of a world, we'd found a largely recovered biosphere with and a rebounding Human population.
Where most of Earth's once great cities had been abandoned and dismantled to help build the Exodus fleet generations ago, there were still signs of habitation in the shadows of some of them: mostly a scattering of settlements in widely separated pockets. We could see them. We were still avoiding contact, but we had enough resolution from the drones to see some of the settlements. And, from a distance, they didn't seem like they'd have been entirely out of place on some remote moon back home.
The only glaring difference between a colony at home and the villages or few small cities of Earth appeared at night. While even a small town on a Rim colony glowed enough to be seen from orbit, the cities of Earth were mostly dark. The few lights we could see had the spectral characteristics of either open flame or a mantle lantern. From above, the nights of Earth were lit with torches.
In fact, we hadn't detected any power systems at all. With the exception of a few small sources, probably the remains of a long forgotten fission reactor, there was simply no power. No electrical fields. No radio. No controlled gravity sources. Nothing that we could detect from orbit or the drones tentatively exploring Earth's atmosphere. Our cousins had either abandoned or forgotten the technologies that had taken their ancestors into the Black. Either that, or their shielding was very, very, good.
It was a mystery we'd solve soon enough. Our observations so far showed several styles of architecture, differences in living styles and conditions, some hints at culture. But so far no language and, without any kind of broadcast communications, it would take a much closer approach before we were ready to make contact. Not that we hadn't planned for this.
Once we had a good idea where to start, we'd set up a concealed observation post to learn all we could before making contact. Some of the science crew were already sorting through the data we had in their eagerness to get on the surface. But there was still so much to do. Closer observations. Sample returns. A bucketfull of biology to see if it was even safe for us to go home. All things that would take time. Something we may, or may not, have in abundance.
There were other things on my mind other than Earth, unfortunately. While we'd been sorting and disseminating fifteen years worth of assorted comms traffic to the crew, we made some effort to keep some of the developments back in 34 Tauri obscure. We weren't going to lie to the crew. But we weren't going to worry them with the possibility that there might be a robotic warship on its way to turn us into ionized vapor. We just didn't know, which meant we were going to continue with the main mission while bringing some contingency plans into effect.
Though there were still some pressing matters which justified a meeting of the senior staff. Unlike the late Captain Gill, I wasn't especially fond of meetings. With the exception of some tactical planning sessions and the related briefings, most meetings took people away from actually doing the work that needed to be done. A dozen people sitting around a conference room usually wasn't the most efficient use of resources. But, sometimes, it was part of the job.
I kept it to senior staff. Operations. Science. Engineering. Medical. The ORCAs. They were all aware that Mission Control on Ariel had stopped sending updates part way into the mission, leaving us very much alone at Sol. Most of them knew the likely reason why the folks back home had stopped streaming updates. Some of them had been in discussions with each other, and me, on how we were going to handle the situation. It was the main reason for this meeting.
That, and announcing my replacement for Executive Officer. There was a reason the position existed with duties separate from the Captain. Actually several reasons, some of which changed dramatically depending on the dynamics of the crew, the mission, and the relationship of the officers involved. Where I had been well qualified to handle crew matters and some of my other, not so obvious, duties, I was less qualified for the role I found myself in. Which meant my XO would have to fill a different set of gaps than I'd filled for Captain Gill.
The problem was we didn't really have the luxury of a dedicated officer to fill the role. Whoever I picked would have to maintain their original duties in addition to being my backup and advisor, which made it an even more difficult choice. But in the end, the choice was fairly obvious. There really was only one officer on this ship who was not only capable of doing the job, but was well liked by the majority of the crew. That, and I trusted him. As much as I trusted anyone.
I rarely stood on formality, even when dealing with the lowest ranked members of the crew. While I understood that in many circumstances a rigid chain of command helped maintain discipline, on this ship, with this crew, it wasn't a requirement. We'd trained and worked together long enough that respect, sometimes grudging, albeit, had been earned all around. It was one of the changes since Matthew Gill's demise.
"I'm going to try and keep this brief, if possible, to let you all get back to work," I started once everyone had arrived. At this stage, they were all busy. Even the ORCA's, who were fulfilling their "Operational Reserve" duties for most of the other operational crews. "First off, I want to announce the promotion of our lead navigator, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Schulps, to the position of Executive Officer. Given the changes in our original command structure and the fact he'll still need to cover Nav, there won't be many changes in how we've done things since I took over. I'll still have an open door policy for anyone who needs to talk to me, but point your teams and Commander Schulps if they want to go up the food chain officially."
I let the congratulations die down for a couple of minutes. Andrew was well respected by the officers and crew alike, and a damn fine navigator. He actually had a doctoral in it and had taught at Academy for a number of years. Of the original bridge crew Gill'd hand picked to serve with him, Schulps was the one man I'd honestly gotten to like. Probably helped that his hobby had been collecting high quality knives.
"Second, and probably more pressing, is how we're going to deal with the rest of the mission in light of the last transmissions from Mission Control." The assembled staff got quiet, since only a couple of them had been in on all of the various discussions and decisions. "We knew going in we would be on our own. That was the nature of the mission. We hadn't planned on Mission Control going quiet before we got here, or the possibility of having hostiles coming along behind us."
No surprises. They'd all known this shortly after I'd read the briefings from home myself. "The Sled was never intended for combat. She's big and ungodly fast, but not especially maneuverable or well armed," which got a couple of suppressed laughs. The fact was, Children of Earth was, for all intents and purposes, essentially unarmed. At least by design. She was a purpose built exploration ship, intended for one very specific missions. No one had ever planned on us having to fight the ship.
"Not counting any light weaponry we have on the landers, the Sled's ATR launchers and small rock guns won't do much against a warship if it comes to that. But there is one bright spot. You all know the big dorsal communications laser we were using to send signals back home. What you may not have known was that the emitter core was re-purposed from a Qilin class destroyer's spinal mount," I told them with a faint smile. Letting that settle in.
The Qirin's main armament was a high power rapid pulse laser that more or less filled the spine of the ship. It had longer range and better penetration than the pulse cannon that made up the primary armament of most other ships, at the cost of greater expense. On a Qirin it in a fixed spinal mount, which meant turning the ship to train the weapon. On the Sled, the big communications laser was steerable so we could punch messages back to 34 Tauri no matter which way we were facing.
"Sabrina's pretty sure the Engineering team can adapt the comms laser to act as a weapon once again. Which means if we do have to fight, we'll have something fairly formidable to fight with. The bottom line though, is we have no reason to suspect there is a hostile ship inbound. None. At all. We're doing some limited combat planning based on the remote possibility we'll have to fight this ship. The mission, as we know it, is going to continue as we know it. Engineering and Operations will work any combat preparations into their existing schedules as a secondary duty."
I could see relief on most faces. With the exception of Belize, Sabrina, and myself, none of the Sled's crew had ever dealt with the Machines. To a lot of people, they'd been like Reavers: something made up by backward colonists on the Rim to scare their children. Only, like Reavers, the Machines had been quite real. Unlike the Reavers, the Machines were an experimental weapon gone awry. Also, unlike the Reavers, the Machine threat had the potential to grow, rather than die out through attrition and poor dental hygiene.
"We'll have updates on the combat prep in future meetings, but for now, let's get back to our primary mission. We've got a home to return to. Let's figure out where to go first."
The rest of the meeting went like most of these meetings: progress reports and a lot of open discussion. Officially or not, everyone on the Sled was part of the Science and that was what got most of the attention. A fact I didn't mind.
Very soon now, we would be sending the first teams to the surface, and where they went would be a fairly monumental decision. Recontact would go into the history books. Someone's history books, anyway. Where we made contact, who we met, and who we sent, was something we were almost guaranteed to get wrong. The Science teams would have their recommendations. So would the ORCAs. But ultimately, the decision was mine.
I could only hope History would treat the decision kindly.
Where most of Earth's once great cities had been abandoned and dismantled to help build the Exodus fleet generations ago, there were still signs of habitation in the shadows of some of them: mostly a scattering of settlements in widely separated pockets. We could see them. We were still avoiding contact, but we had enough resolution from the drones to see some of the settlements. And, from a distance, they didn't seem like they'd have been entirely out of place on some remote moon back home.
The only glaring difference between a colony at home and the villages or few small cities of Earth appeared at night. While even a small town on a Rim colony glowed enough to be seen from orbit, the cities of Earth were mostly dark. The few lights we could see had the spectral characteristics of either open flame or a mantle lantern. From above, the nights of Earth were lit with torches.
In fact, we hadn't detected any power systems at all. With the exception of a few small sources, probably the remains of a long forgotten fission reactor, there was simply no power. No electrical fields. No radio. No controlled gravity sources. Nothing that we could detect from orbit or the drones tentatively exploring Earth's atmosphere. Our cousins had either abandoned or forgotten the technologies that had taken their ancestors into the Black. Either that, or their shielding was very, very, good.
It was a mystery we'd solve soon enough. Our observations so far showed several styles of architecture, differences in living styles and conditions, some hints at culture. But so far no language and, without any kind of broadcast communications, it would take a much closer approach before we were ready to make contact. Not that we hadn't planned for this.
Once we had a good idea where to start, we'd set up a concealed observation post to learn all we could before making contact. Some of the science crew were already sorting through the data we had in their eagerness to get on the surface. But there was still so much to do. Closer observations. Sample returns. A bucketfull of biology to see if it was even safe for us to go home. All things that would take time. Something we may, or may not, have in abundance.
There were other things on my mind other than Earth, unfortunately. While we'd been sorting and disseminating fifteen years worth of assorted comms traffic to the crew, we made some effort to keep some of the developments back in 34 Tauri obscure. We weren't going to lie to the crew. But we weren't going to worry them with the possibility that there might be a robotic warship on its way to turn us into ionized vapor. We just didn't know, which meant we were going to continue with the main mission while bringing some contingency plans into effect.
Though there were still some pressing matters which justified a meeting of the senior staff. Unlike the late Captain Gill, I wasn't especially fond of meetings. With the exception of some tactical planning sessions and the related briefings, most meetings took people away from actually doing the work that needed to be done. A dozen people sitting around a conference room usually wasn't the most efficient use of resources. But, sometimes, it was part of the job.
I kept it to senior staff. Operations. Science. Engineering. Medical. The ORCAs. They were all aware that Mission Control on Ariel had stopped sending updates part way into the mission, leaving us very much alone at Sol. Most of them knew the likely reason why the folks back home had stopped streaming updates. Some of them had been in discussions with each other, and me, on how we were going to handle the situation. It was the main reason for this meeting.
That, and announcing my replacement for Executive Officer. There was a reason the position existed with duties separate from the Captain. Actually several reasons, some of which changed dramatically depending on the dynamics of the crew, the mission, and the relationship of the officers involved. Where I had been well qualified to handle crew matters and some of my other, not so obvious, duties, I was less qualified for the role I found myself in. Which meant my XO would have to fill a different set of gaps than I'd filled for Captain Gill.
The problem was we didn't really have the luxury of a dedicated officer to fill the role. Whoever I picked would have to maintain their original duties in addition to being my backup and advisor, which made it an even more difficult choice. But in the end, the choice was fairly obvious. There really was only one officer on this ship who was not only capable of doing the job, but was well liked by the majority of the crew. That, and I trusted him. As much as I trusted anyone.
I rarely stood on formality, even when dealing with the lowest ranked members of the crew. While I understood that in many circumstances a rigid chain of command helped maintain discipline, on this ship, with this crew, it wasn't a requirement. We'd trained and worked together long enough that respect, sometimes grudging, albeit, had been earned all around. It was one of the changes since Matthew Gill's demise.
"I'm going to try and keep this brief, if possible, to let you all get back to work," I started once everyone had arrived. At this stage, they were all busy. Even the ORCA's, who were fulfilling their "Operational Reserve" duties for most of the other operational crews. "First off, I want to announce the promotion of our lead navigator, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Schulps, to the position of Executive Officer. Given the changes in our original command structure and the fact he'll still need to cover Nav, there won't be many changes in how we've done things since I took over. I'll still have an open door policy for anyone who needs to talk to me, but point your teams and Commander Schulps if they want to go up the food chain officially."
I let the congratulations die down for a couple of minutes. Andrew was well respected by the officers and crew alike, and a damn fine navigator. He actually had a doctoral in it and had taught at Academy for a number of years. Of the original bridge crew Gill'd hand picked to serve with him, Schulps was the one man I'd honestly gotten to like. Probably helped that his hobby had been collecting high quality knives.
"Second, and probably more pressing, is how we're going to deal with the rest of the mission in light of the last transmissions from Mission Control." The assembled staff got quiet, since only a couple of them had been in on all of the various discussions and decisions. "We knew going in we would be on our own. That was the nature of the mission. We hadn't planned on Mission Control going quiet before we got here, or the possibility of having hostiles coming along behind us."
No surprises. They'd all known this shortly after I'd read the briefings from home myself. "The Sled was never intended for combat. She's big and ungodly fast, but not especially maneuverable or well armed," which got a couple of suppressed laughs. The fact was, Children of Earth was, for all intents and purposes, essentially unarmed. At least by design. She was a purpose built exploration ship, intended for one very specific missions. No one had ever planned on us having to fight the ship.
"Not counting any light weaponry we have on the landers, the Sled's ATR launchers and small rock guns won't do much against a warship if it comes to that. But there is one bright spot. You all know the big dorsal communications laser we were using to send signals back home. What you may not have known was that the emitter core was re-purposed from a Qilin class destroyer's spinal mount," I told them with a faint smile. Letting that settle in.
The Qirin's main armament was a high power rapid pulse laser that more or less filled the spine of the ship. It had longer range and better penetration than the pulse cannon that made up the primary armament of most other ships, at the cost of greater expense. On a Qirin it in a fixed spinal mount, which meant turning the ship to train the weapon. On the Sled, the big communications laser was steerable so we could punch messages back to 34 Tauri no matter which way we were facing.
"Sabrina's pretty sure the Engineering team can adapt the comms laser to act as a weapon once again. Which means if we do have to fight, we'll have something fairly formidable to fight with. The bottom line though, is we have no reason to suspect there is a hostile ship inbound. None. At all. We're doing some limited combat planning based on the remote possibility we'll have to fight this ship. The mission, as we know it, is going to continue as we know it. Engineering and Operations will work any combat preparations into their existing schedules as a secondary duty."
I could see relief on most faces. With the exception of Belize, Sabrina, and myself, none of the Sled's crew had ever dealt with the Machines. To a lot of people, they'd been like Reavers: something made up by backward colonists on the Rim to scare their children. Only, like Reavers, the Machines had been quite real. Unlike the Reavers, the Machines were an experimental weapon gone awry. Also, unlike the Reavers, the Machine threat had the potential to grow, rather than die out through attrition and poor dental hygiene.
"We'll have updates on the combat prep in future meetings, but for now, let's get back to our primary mission. We've got a home to return to. Let's figure out where to go first."
The rest of the meeting went like most of these meetings: progress reports and a lot of open discussion. Officially or not, everyone on the Sled was part of the Science and that was what got most of the attention. A fact I didn't mind.
Very soon now, we would be sending the first teams to the surface, and where they went would be a fairly monumental decision. Recontact would go into the history books. Someone's history books, anyway. Where we made contact, who we met, and who we sent, was something we were almost guaranteed to get wrong. The Science teams would have their recommendations. So would the ORCAs. But ultimately, the decision was mine.
I could only hope History would treat the decision kindly.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Inner Worlds
Before the Exodus, when Humanity was first coming to the realization that they were rapidly over stressing Earth, they'd made an effort to colonize the Moon and terraform both Venus and Mars. Mercury, as close as it was to Sol, was never considered as a destination. The details of those efforts were lost to history. Like so many things lose to the past, we only had fragments. The only thing we knew with any certainty was that the efforts had, ultimately, failed.
According to the histories, the terraforming had failed on both inner worlds, and the colony on the moon never had the capacity to take more than a tiny fraction of Earth's population. There was some debate amongst historians as to whether they'd actually tried to terraform the moon, or any of the other likely targets in the solar system. Titan, Europa, Ceres, Ganymede, were all larger than some of the smaller bodies that had been terraformed in the 34 Tauri system. But the records simply weren't there, leaving us to answer the questions for ourselves.
While we would never know their minds, we could see what effort they'd gone through here at Sol before departure. Which appeared to be "not much." At least not on the scale they'd executed back home. Where there was some evidence of attempts to gravity compress a couple of small bodies, as they had to myriad moons in the 34 Tauri system, the results were less than spectacular. In the earliest days of terraforming technology the success rate just wasn't there. The recon probes would swing through the two inner gas giant systems and visit the larger asteroids to see if they'd tried to establish a presence, but we weren't expecting much.
The drones sent to Venus and Mars told a different story. Where the failure of Luna's colony was obvious, the situation on Sol's other inner world's wasn't so clear.
At its peak, Luna's colonies had probably supported two or three million people. Unlike the small bodies in 34 Tauri that had undergone gravity compression and actually supported a breathable atmosphere, Luna had always been a Black Rock. It never had an atmosphere to speak of and all of the colonies had been a combination of sealed surface structures and tunnel complexes using a mix of fusion piles and solar collectors for power.
Now though, telemetry from the drones and our own sensors showed Luna was effectively dead. There was a trickle of power from a handful of still functional solar collectors and some of the tunnels still appeared to hold atmo, but there were no signs of life or habitation. The surface team would go in, of course. That was their job. But it would be more archeology than anything else. Possibly a bit of scavenging if needed to augment our capabilities. But the man in the moon was dead and he had been for a long, long, time.
The situation on Mars was similar, though on a larger scale. While the Terraforming efforts on Mars had been primitive, they were orders of magnitude more comfortable than living in fusion sealed tunnels on an airless rock. Mars had had an atmosphere of its own before Humanity came to town and tried to make it cozy.
From the limited records and what we could see now that we were here, the Terraforming had been partially successful but hadn't remained stable. While they'd managed to get something that almost passed for a breathable atmosphere, they'd never gotten the density they'd needed to make it stick. For a while, Mars had been habitable. Folk there would have needed breathers on the surface, but they wouldn't have needed a pressure suit. And, unlike the moon, the dust wasn't going to be grinding their gear to death. It'd even rain from time to time. Wouldn't have been much, but it would have been real.
While it lasted.
We'd know more then the survey crews started to report back from Mars' surface, but we could tell from the drones alone that the Mars colony had failed. When? That was harder to say. From the little we knew so far, there'd been folks left living on Mars when the Exodus left for 34 Tauri. No telling how many, though the colonys on Mars were at least as big as the ones on Luna at their peak. Possibly as many as five or six million people. In theory, they'd had a better chance of long term survival then their kinfolk on Earth's moon. Much easier to live in thin atmo than hard vacuum. But in the end Mars reverted to its pre-terraformed state.
How long had they survived? A decade? Maybe ten? Had they tried to evacuate back to Earth, or tried to dig in and survive under hostile conditions? The survey team would tell us more. As with Luna the sensors had picked up faint power signatures, though they were probably just from some leftover equipment that was hanging on long after it should have died. According to the science team, there was a slim, but finite, chance there were still people surviving there. Though we hadn't detected any communications traffic or surface indications of life, there was the possibility colonists there had dug in and somehow managed to survive. It was a slim chance, but the survey teams would look.
Venus was a very different animal. It should have been Earth's sister world, but a runaway greenhouse effect had turned it into an inferno. By planetary engineering standards, it was ripe for terraforming. Unfortunately, according to the remaining histories, the terraforming effort there had been a failure from the start. While the equipment was in place, the harsh conditions made the process dramatically slower than anticipated and by the time of the Exodus, Venus was still uninhabitable.
What we saw now, though, was a very different picture. According to the two drones surveying Venus and our own long range imagery, it had become a living world. The details were still coming back to us, but it was apparent that the terraforming hadn't exactly failed. It had just taken a good deal longer than expected.
Why had the terraforming misbehaved on Venus? Another question the science team would answer if they could. The results of the early efforts in Sol system would be interesting to the planetary engineers back home, once the information made it to them in another forty years or so. Assuming, of course, there were any planetary engineers left at home to get the message.
Assuming we sent the message in the first place.
As with Mars, we'd know more once the survey teams had their chance on the surface. They'd be able to tell just how far the terraforming had gone and whether the planet would be suitable for life. We'd brought equipment to recolonize Earth, or another suitable world, if the opportunity arose. I don't think anyone had expected the previously barren Venus to turn out to be the opportunity we were looking at.
It was something we'd take under consideration when the time came to stay or go. We'd revisit the possibility of settling there, or on Earth, or striking out for another nearby star, or heading back to 34 Tauri. Colonization was a long term commitment separate from the commitment we'd made to the mission. One I wasn't even prepared to think about just yet.
Earth was our priority. And from here, Earth was beautiful. There were pictures in history books that showed Earth as a beautiful world of blue oceans and varied lands. The Earth of legend. Earth long before the Exodus. But that wasn't the only image we had.
There were images taken by the Exodus fleet as they left Sol system, leaving Earth behind. And those images were of a much different world. Sickly greenish brown plumes in the oceans. Barren wastelands on the ground. Browns and grays and blacks. The wreckage of cities visible even from orbit scattered across the landscape. It was the world Humanity had left behind. The world they'd ruined.
In the hundreds of years we'd been gone, Earth had apparently recovered. At least to some level. There were still areas of obvious devastation and the seas were still filled with swirls of odd colors, but the skies sported layers of white cloud and there were vast swaths of obviously regrown vegetation. Earth, in spite of being 'used up' by our ancestors, was still a living world. It appeared that life was quite tenacious.
It would be a while still before the orbiters were done with their work and we'd be ready to actually return home. Like Luna and Mars, there were faint power signatures in a few scattered locations on the surface. But none of them seemed to correspond to habitations. The most likely explanation was derelict solar collectors, or wave generators, or the last vestiges of heat escaping an ancient fission reactor.
If there were still people living on Earth, they weren't using a lot of power. If? No. Not if. There were people still alive on Earth. Even from here, we could see evidence of settlements. A few small towns. Scattered farmland. Mostly outside areas that had once been cities, but still signs of survival. The official histories had said everyone had evacuated, but I don't think anyone really believed that. Not even back then. There were just too many humans to evacuate them all. Some were bound to be missed. Some would stay behind because they didn't want to leave.
They'd inherited a ruined world, yet managed to survive. Over five hundred years later Earth's children had come home to find our brothers and sisters still hanging on. What would we find when we finally set down and came face to face with those our ancestors had left behind?
Soon. Very soon.
We would know.
According to the histories, the terraforming had failed on both inner worlds, and the colony on the moon never had the capacity to take more than a tiny fraction of Earth's population. There was some debate amongst historians as to whether they'd actually tried to terraform the moon, or any of the other likely targets in the solar system. Titan, Europa, Ceres, Ganymede, were all larger than some of the smaller bodies that had been terraformed in the 34 Tauri system. But the records simply weren't there, leaving us to answer the questions for ourselves.
While we would never know their minds, we could see what effort they'd gone through here at Sol before departure. Which appeared to be "not much." At least not on the scale they'd executed back home. Where there was some evidence of attempts to gravity compress a couple of small bodies, as they had to myriad moons in the 34 Tauri system, the results were less than spectacular. In the earliest days of terraforming technology the success rate just wasn't there. The recon probes would swing through the two inner gas giant systems and visit the larger asteroids to see if they'd tried to establish a presence, but we weren't expecting much.
The drones sent to Venus and Mars told a different story. Where the failure of Luna's colony was obvious, the situation on Sol's other inner world's wasn't so clear.
At its peak, Luna's colonies had probably supported two or three million people. Unlike the small bodies in 34 Tauri that had undergone gravity compression and actually supported a breathable atmosphere, Luna had always been a Black Rock. It never had an atmosphere to speak of and all of the colonies had been a combination of sealed surface structures and tunnel complexes using a mix of fusion piles and solar collectors for power.
Now though, telemetry from the drones and our own sensors showed Luna was effectively dead. There was a trickle of power from a handful of still functional solar collectors and some of the tunnels still appeared to hold atmo, but there were no signs of life or habitation. The surface team would go in, of course. That was their job. But it would be more archeology than anything else. Possibly a bit of scavenging if needed to augment our capabilities. But the man in the moon was dead and he had been for a long, long, time.
The situation on Mars was similar, though on a larger scale. While the Terraforming efforts on Mars had been primitive, they were orders of magnitude more comfortable than living in fusion sealed tunnels on an airless rock. Mars had had an atmosphere of its own before Humanity came to town and tried to make it cozy.
From the limited records and what we could see now that we were here, the Terraforming had been partially successful but hadn't remained stable. While they'd managed to get something that almost passed for a breathable atmosphere, they'd never gotten the density they'd needed to make it stick. For a while, Mars had been habitable. Folk there would have needed breathers on the surface, but they wouldn't have needed a pressure suit. And, unlike the moon, the dust wasn't going to be grinding their gear to death. It'd even rain from time to time. Wouldn't have been much, but it would have been real.
While it lasted.
We'd know more then the survey crews started to report back from Mars' surface, but we could tell from the drones alone that the Mars colony had failed. When? That was harder to say. From the little we knew so far, there'd been folks left living on Mars when the Exodus left for 34 Tauri. No telling how many, though the colonys on Mars were at least as big as the ones on Luna at their peak. Possibly as many as five or six million people. In theory, they'd had a better chance of long term survival then their kinfolk on Earth's moon. Much easier to live in thin atmo than hard vacuum. But in the end Mars reverted to its pre-terraformed state.
How long had they survived? A decade? Maybe ten? Had they tried to evacuate back to Earth, or tried to dig in and survive under hostile conditions? The survey team would tell us more. As with Luna the sensors had picked up faint power signatures, though they were probably just from some leftover equipment that was hanging on long after it should have died. According to the science team, there was a slim, but finite, chance there were still people surviving there. Though we hadn't detected any communications traffic or surface indications of life, there was the possibility colonists there had dug in and somehow managed to survive. It was a slim chance, but the survey teams would look.
Venus was a very different animal. It should have been Earth's sister world, but a runaway greenhouse effect had turned it into an inferno. By planetary engineering standards, it was ripe for terraforming. Unfortunately, according to the remaining histories, the terraforming effort there had been a failure from the start. While the equipment was in place, the harsh conditions made the process dramatically slower than anticipated and by the time of the Exodus, Venus was still uninhabitable.
What we saw now, though, was a very different picture. According to the two drones surveying Venus and our own long range imagery, it had become a living world. The details were still coming back to us, but it was apparent that the terraforming hadn't exactly failed. It had just taken a good deal longer than expected.
Why had the terraforming misbehaved on Venus? Another question the science team would answer if they could. The results of the early efforts in Sol system would be interesting to the planetary engineers back home, once the information made it to them in another forty years or so. Assuming, of course, there were any planetary engineers left at home to get the message.
Assuming we sent the message in the first place.
As with Mars, we'd know more once the survey teams had their chance on the surface. They'd be able to tell just how far the terraforming had gone and whether the planet would be suitable for life. We'd brought equipment to recolonize Earth, or another suitable world, if the opportunity arose. I don't think anyone had expected the previously barren Venus to turn out to be the opportunity we were looking at.
It was something we'd take under consideration when the time came to stay or go. We'd revisit the possibility of settling there, or on Earth, or striking out for another nearby star, or heading back to 34 Tauri. Colonization was a long term commitment separate from the commitment we'd made to the mission. One I wasn't even prepared to think about just yet.
Earth was our priority. And from here, Earth was beautiful. There were pictures in history books that showed Earth as a beautiful world of blue oceans and varied lands. The Earth of legend. Earth long before the Exodus. But that wasn't the only image we had.
There were images taken by the Exodus fleet as they left Sol system, leaving Earth behind. And those images were of a much different world. Sickly greenish brown plumes in the oceans. Barren wastelands on the ground. Browns and grays and blacks. The wreckage of cities visible even from orbit scattered across the landscape. It was the world Humanity had left behind. The world they'd ruined.
In the hundreds of years we'd been gone, Earth had apparently recovered. At least to some level. There were still areas of obvious devastation and the seas were still filled with swirls of odd colors, but the skies sported layers of white cloud and there were vast swaths of obviously regrown vegetation. Earth, in spite of being 'used up' by our ancestors, was still a living world. It appeared that life was quite tenacious.
It would be a while still before the orbiters were done with their work and we'd be ready to actually return home. Like Luna and Mars, there were faint power signatures in a few scattered locations on the surface. But none of them seemed to correspond to habitations. The most likely explanation was derelict solar collectors, or wave generators, or the last vestiges of heat escaping an ancient fission reactor.
If there were still people living on Earth, they weren't using a lot of power. If? No. Not if. There were people still alive on Earth. Even from here, we could see evidence of settlements. A few small towns. Scattered farmland. Mostly outside areas that had once been cities, but still signs of survival. The official histories had said everyone had evacuated, but I don't think anyone really believed that. Not even back then. There were just too many humans to evacuate them all. Some were bound to be missed. Some would stay behind because they didn't want to leave.
They'd inherited a ruined world, yet managed to survive. Over five hundred years later Earth's children had come home to find our brothers and sisters still hanging on. What would we find when we finally set down and came face to face with those our ancestors had left behind?
Soon. Very soon.
We would know.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Awakening
Awakening from cold sleep is always disorienting. While you're in hibernation you don't move. You don't age. You don't breath. You don't have a heartbeat. You don't dream. For all practical purposes, you're dead. At least until the cycle ends and your body comes back up to temperature, your heart and lungs restart, and your brain comes back on line. It isn't comfortable. It can be frightening. It is always disorienting.
The disorientation lasted a few minutes before I was really aware of what was going on, the confines of the hibernation chamber initially alien, then becoming familiar as my brain started to work again. It was a few moments more before I realized who I was, where I was, and why I was laying in a well padded coffin with sensors and tubes strapped to my body. That's when it hit me that I was actually still alive.
I was still alive.
It took another few minutes for the pretty moving symbols on the screen in front of me to start making sense. The colors and display patterns were intended to be soothing to someone recently awoken from cold sleep, then quickly understandable as the disorientation wore off. The display in my chamber said I was alive, in good health, and that Children of Earth herself was operating within normal parameters. Most importantly, we were backing into Sol system at the end of our long, long journey.
I tried to raise my hand to access the control menus on the panel above me, but got little. My consciousness had recovered faster than my muscles. Frustration. Not panic. My voice wasn't working yet either, but as I focused more I could feel the sensation and control returning to my body. Just a matter of time. Three minutes, and almost felt alive.
"Nora. Status." My voice sounded coarse, barely audible, but Nora should be able to determine make out the expected command. But nothing. Another moment and I tried again, my voice a little firmer, a little clearer. "Nora? Status, Nora." But still nothing. Was I deaf? Was she responding and I just couldn't hear it? No. The visual display hadn't changed. Nora wasn't responding as she should.
"Nora. Status. C'mon, girl. Talk to me." I could still hear the course edge to my voice. After all that time in cold sleep, my vocal cords were still less that fully functional. But my physical control was returning rapidly. Another few minutes and I'd be able to open the chamber manually.
"I'm sorry, Mei Mei. Nora can't speak just now." The voice that responded wasn't Nora's. The male side of androgynous, I recognized it instantly.
"Blue. . ." I said just above a whisper. A voice I hadn't expected to hear again. Ever.
"Yes, Mei Mei. At your service." The AI broke into a quiet, amused, laugh. Somehow, the Blue Man artificial intelligence was here, with us, at Sol.
"Hush, Blue. You're being all scary. Be nice. She's been asleep a long time." Another voice, a girl, no more than twelve or thirteen. Pleasant, cheerful, familiar, and thought far away across space and time.
"Aurorablue. . ." The child I'd never thought I'd see again. The Tiniest Dragon. Legally Lily's daughter and my granddaughter, though genetically . . . Genetically the result of some very specific tinkering.
"Hi, Mommy Seana! I'm sorry Blue was acting all creepy and stuff."
"But, Little One, how? How are you, either of you, here?"
"Oh, that was easy! Nora's Frame here was always big enough to support an AI like Blue without interfering with all the system and science functions. We just copied our Ghosts and uploaded them into the Frame before everyone went to sleep."
Before we'd gone to sleep? Blue, I could see transferring his essence, his Ghost, to the Sled's Frame. It was massively over-specified, given what we expected to need for the mission, and Nora was a tiny resource draw compared to some of the science and navigation programs. But Aurora'? She wasn't a machine intelligence like Blue. Organic minds couldn't live in a computer. Or could they?
"Blue I understand, Little One, but you?"
"I was made special, Mommy. My mind isn't like other people's, and Miss x0x0 figured out how to copy my Ghost so I could come with you. There's a lot I need to tell you. A lot happened while you were asleep but it's almost time for you to get up and we need to give Nora her voice back. Come on, Blue!" She sounded amused and I could almost imagine her looking at a clock, like she was late for class, calling Blue like I'd once called our Beagle, Haley.
"Ok, Little One. I'm not going anywhere." I said softly, but there was no answer. Blue and AuroraBlue were gone. Had I dreamed it? A hallucinatory reaction to cold sleep? The voices of people I'd left behind in 34 Tauri and missed saying a last good bye. But Nora's last words to me before I went to sleep. Had I imagined those too?
If it was imagination, it would almost certainly pass quickly. In the few minutes I'd been awake, my ongoing self assessment was matching closely what I saw on the readouts in front of me. Rapid recovery. My voice sounding more coherent, I tried again to get a response from the Sled.
"Nora. Status."
"Good morning, Captain." Nora's voice was back. Calm and familiar. "Children of Earth is decelerating into Sol system at seven point five two gravity. We are currently crossing Neptune's orbit. Drive performance is nominal. Navigation is nominal. Power systems are nominal. Life support functions are nominal and all habitable areas of the ship are within normal environmental ranges. Bussard Ramscoop operation during transit was partially successful. Fuel tankage is currently seventy one percent of capacity. Tank operation is nominal. Cold sleep system performance is nominal with a pod failure rate of zero point seven percent."
Better then a ninety nine percent success rate with the pods. Better, in fact, than expected. But still. I knew every member of the sled's crew. Every loss would be personal. It took a long moment for it to settle in, but I had to know. Nora'd called me Captain. It could mean only one thing. "Nora, detail the failures, please."
"Gill, Matthew, Captain. Status, deceased. Captain Gill's pod suffered a type three systemic failure, requiring emergency revival prior to refreeze. Emergency revival process failed at stage four. Protocol requires command transfer to you, Captain Kawanishi."
Nora paused a moment, "knowing" within the limits of her nearly AI code that it would take a moment for me to assimilate that I was now in command of the mission. A field promotion under less than ideal circumstances. It didn't help that Gill's pod had failed in such a way that he'd needed to be revived to correct the problem, and been lost just before the pod could release him. His worst fear realized: to die alone, deep in the Black.
"Go on, Nora."
"Wolfe, Byron, Astography. Status deceased. Mister Wolfe's pod suffered a type one systemic failure. Revival not possible. Jackobs, Sebastian, Drive Engineering. Status deceased. Mister Jackobs pod suffered a type one systemic failure. Revival not possible. Other pod anomalies were corrected in flight. Would you like me to detail them?"
"No, not now." Nora's calm voice was helping me focus, clearing the remaining hibernation fog from my mind. "Nora, I need you to alter the standard revival protocol. Essential medical and engineering personnel first as planned, but I want the ORCA's awake before you revive the rest of the flight crew."
"Understood, Captain. I will start Doctor Carver's revival process now. Would you like me to open your pod, Captain?"
"Yes, Nora," I replied, then shivered a little as the seal's popped and the ship's air hit my skin. Until that moment I hadn't really realized just how cold I was, but the contrast between the sled's shirtsleeve environment and the deep cold of the hibernation chamber was extreme. The final jolt I needed to come back to my senses.
As I worked my way out of the tank and into some clothes, I watched the displays monitoring Bel's chamber where Nora was working through the revival process. Once we had Bel back, we could revive Sabrina and a couple of her Engineers along with the rest of the medical team. Then the ORCAS. Given Gill's near paranoia before going into suspension, his loss would almost certainly strike some of the ex-Fleet flight crew as suspicious. While the early tensions had long subsided, there were still some personal loyalties to deal with amongst them. They would follow me as officers but they would probably wonder if I hadn't somehow done in 'their' Captain in order to take over the mission.
It wouldn't matter that I hadn't. The 'controlled friction' between us would put his loss in doubt regardless. His hand picked officers were unlikely to act on any doubts they might hold, but I wanted the ORCA's awake just in case.
And what of Aurora' and Blue? Had I imagined it? It was as clear in my mind as anything, but I'd chosen not to ask Nora just yet about her own internal systems. It was conceptually possible that x0x0 had managed to copy the essential neural pathways and chemical signals that defined AuroraBlue's organic mind. If she could, and could get it into the same sort of holographic matrix that made up Blue's AI, it was conceivable she'd be able to get it uploaded into the Frame. Possible. Maybe. Had it happened? I didn't know. Not yet.
But it would have to wait. Right now, I had a starship and her four hundred thirty crew to bring back to life. There would be time to search for a couple of Ghosts in our machine later. As well as checking through decades of communication from home, all while backing towards a home that may, or may not, be ready to welcome its children home.
The disorientation lasted a few minutes before I was really aware of what was going on, the confines of the hibernation chamber initially alien, then becoming familiar as my brain started to work again. It was a few moments more before I realized who I was, where I was, and why I was laying in a well padded coffin with sensors and tubes strapped to my body. That's when it hit me that I was actually still alive.
I was still alive.
It took another few minutes for the pretty moving symbols on the screen in front of me to start making sense. The colors and display patterns were intended to be soothing to someone recently awoken from cold sleep, then quickly understandable as the disorientation wore off. The display in my chamber said I was alive, in good health, and that Children of Earth herself was operating within normal parameters. Most importantly, we were backing into Sol system at the end of our long, long journey.
I tried to raise my hand to access the control menus on the panel above me, but got little. My consciousness had recovered faster than my muscles. Frustration. Not panic. My voice wasn't working yet either, but as I focused more I could feel the sensation and control returning to my body. Just a matter of time. Three minutes, and almost felt alive.
"Nora. Status." My voice sounded coarse, barely audible, but Nora should be able to determine make out the expected command. But nothing. Another moment and I tried again, my voice a little firmer, a little clearer. "Nora? Status, Nora." But still nothing. Was I deaf? Was she responding and I just couldn't hear it? No. The visual display hadn't changed. Nora wasn't responding as she should.
"Nora. Status. C'mon, girl. Talk to me." I could still hear the course edge to my voice. After all that time in cold sleep, my vocal cords were still less that fully functional. But my physical control was returning rapidly. Another few minutes and I'd be able to open the chamber manually.
"I'm sorry, Mei Mei. Nora can't speak just now." The voice that responded wasn't Nora's. The male side of androgynous, I recognized it instantly.
"Blue. . ." I said just above a whisper. A voice I hadn't expected to hear again. Ever.
"Yes, Mei Mei. At your service." The AI broke into a quiet, amused, laugh. Somehow, the Blue Man artificial intelligence was here, with us, at Sol.
"Hush, Blue. You're being all scary. Be nice. She's been asleep a long time." Another voice, a girl, no more than twelve or thirteen. Pleasant, cheerful, familiar, and thought far away across space and time.
"Aurorablue. . ." The child I'd never thought I'd see again. The Tiniest Dragon. Legally Lily's daughter and my granddaughter, though genetically . . . Genetically the result of some very specific tinkering.
"Hi, Mommy Seana! I'm sorry Blue was acting all creepy and stuff."
"But, Little One, how? How are you, either of you, here?"
"Oh, that was easy! Nora's Frame here was always big enough to support an AI like Blue without interfering with all the system and science functions. We just copied our Ghosts and uploaded them into the Frame before everyone went to sleep."
Before we'd gone to sleep? Blue, I could see transferring his essence, his Ghost, to the Sled's Frame. It was massively over-specified, given what we expected to need for the mission, and Nora was a tiny resource draw compared to some of the science and navigation programs. But Aurora'? She wasn't a machine intelligence like Blue. Organic minds couldn't live in a computer. Or could they?
"Blue I understand, Little One, but you?"
"I was made special, Mommy. My mind isn't like other people's, and Miss x0x0 figured out how to copy my Ghost so I could come with you. There's a lot I need to tell you. A lot happened while you were asleep but it's almost time for you to get up and we need to give Nora her voice back. Come on, Blue!" She sounded amused and I could almost imagine her looking at a clock, like she was late for class, calling Blue like I'd once called our Beagle, Haley.
"Ok, Little One. I'm not going anywhere." I said softly, but there was no answer. Blue and AuroraBlue were gone. Had I dreamed it? A hallucinatory reaction to cold sleep? The voices of people I'd left behind in 34 Tauri and missed saying a last good bye. But Nora's last words to me before I went to sleep. Had I imagined those too?
If it was imagination, it would almost certainly pass quickly. In the few minutes I'd been awake, my ongoing self assessment was matching closely what I saw on the readouts in front of me. Rapid recovery. My voice sounding more coherent, I tried again to get a response from the Sled.
"Nora. Status."
"Good morning, Captain." Nora's voice was back. Calm and familiar. "Children of Earth is decelerating into Sol system at seven point five two gravity. We are currently crossing Neptune's orbit. Drive performance is nominal. Navigation is nominal. Power systems are nominal. Life support functions are nominal and all habitable areas of the ship are within normal environmental ranges. Bussard Ramscoop operation during transit was partially successful. Fuel tankage is currently seventy one percent of capacity. Tank operation is nominal. Cold sleep system performance is nominal with a pod failure rate of zero point seven percent."
Better then a ninety nine percent success rate with the pods. Better, in fact, than expected. But still. I knew every member of the sled's crew. Every loss would be personal. It took a long moment for it to settle in, but I had to know. Nora'd called me Captain. It could mean only one thing. "Nora, detail the failures, please."
"Gill, Matthew, Captain. Status, deceased. Captain Gill's pod suffered a type three systemic failure, requiring emergency revival prior to refreeze. Emergency revival process failed at stage four. Protocol requires command transfer to you, Captain Kawanishi."
Nora paused a moment, "knowing" within the limits of her nearly AI code that it would take a moment for me to assimilate that I was now in command of the mission. A field promotion under less than ideal circumstances. It didn't help that Gill's pod had failed in such a way that he'd needed to be revived to correct the problem, and been lost just before the pod could release him. His worst fear realized: to die alone, deep in the Black.
"Go on, Nora."
"Wolfe, Byron, Astography. Status deceased. Mister Wolfe's pod suffered a type one systemic failure. Revival not possible. Jackobs, Sebastian, Drive Engineering. Status deceased. Mister Jackobs pod suffered a type one systemic failure. Revival not possible. Other pod anomalies were corrected in flight. Would you like me to detail them?"
"No, not now." Nora's calm voice was helping me focus, clearing the remaining hibernation fog from my mind. "Nora, I need you to alter the standard revival protocol. Essential medical and engineering personnel first as planned, but I want the ORCA's awake before you revive the rest of the flight crew."
"Understood, Captain. I will start Doctor Carver's revival process now. Would you like me to open your pod, Captain?"
"Yes, Nora," I replied, then shivered a little as the seal's popped and the ship's air hit my skin. Until that moment I hadn't really realized just how cold I was, but the contrast between the sled's shirtsleeve environment and the deep cold of the hibernation chamber was extreme. The final jolt I needed to come back to my senses.
As I worked my way out of the tank and into some clothes, I watched the displays monitoring Bel's chamber where Nora was working through the revival process. Once we had Bel back, we could revive Sabrina and a couple of her Engineers along with the rest of the medical team. Then the ORCAS. Given Gill's near paranoia before going into suspension, his loss would almost certainly strike some of the ex-Fleet flight crew as suspicious. While the early tensions had long subsided, there were still some personal loyalties to deal with amongst them. They would follow me as officers but they would probably wonder if I hadn't somehow done in 'their' Captain in order to take over the mission.
It wouldn't matter that I hadn't. The 'controlled friction' between us would put his loss in doubt regardless. His hand picked officers were unlikely to act on any doubts they might hold, but I wanted the ORCA's awake just in case.
And what of Aurora' and Blue? Had I imagined it? It was as clear in my mind as anything, but I'd chosen not to ask Nora just yet about her own internal systems. It was conceptually possible that x0x0 had managed to copy the essential neural pathways and chemical signals that defined AuroraBlue's organic mind. If she could, and could get it into the same sort of holographic matrix that made up Blue's AI, it was conceivable she'd be able to get it uploaded into the Frame. Possible. Maybe. Had it happened? I didn't know. Not yet.
But it would have to wait. Right now, I had a starship and her four hundred thirty crew to bring back to life. There would be time to search for a couple of Ghosts in our machine later. As well as checking through decades of communication from home, all while backing towards a home that may, or may not, be ready to welcome its children home.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
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.
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.
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