Arrival: Chapter 10

  The airlock opened and one by one the four simulants passed through the portal and boarded the shuttle.  Like the bubble, it was located off of the central non-rotating zero gravity section of the ship.  Halley and Søren watched respectfully from either side of the airlock as the four passed through.

  “Good luck then,” Halley offered somewhat somberly.

  “Yeah, don’t fuck it up,” Søren said with a grin.  “We’ve only got two of these things after all…”  He rapped his knuckles against the hull of the shuttle. 

  Wiremu harrumphed.  “We ain’t come this far…” he said as he passed the two humans and they closed the airlock behind him.  They certainly hadn’t come this far only to crash and be destroyed in the midst of their final triumph.

  “Alright everyone,” Wiremu said with authority as he joined the other simulants in the rear compartment and lead them forward to the flight deck, one hand or foot hold at a time.  “Strap in.”   

  All four made their way past the large and empty rear section of the shuttle which doubled as either passenger space or fuel tanks depending on the need at any given time.  They would be gliding down empty but for the return trip the tanks would be filled with liquefied hydrogen and oxygen, separated and condensed out of the planet’s atmosphere by the shuttle’s systems.

  As the bulkhead isolating the flight deck closed behind them, Wiremu took the left captain’s seat, Sadhika took the co-pilot seat on his right, and they both buckled up their harnesses.  Neil and In-Su pulled down the sideways mounted seats off of the wall behind Wiremu and Sadhika, then worked their bodies into the rear seats which faced each other, and harnessed themselves up.

  “I hate to ask Wii, but uh… you are qualified for this right?” Neil asked from behind Sadhika.  “I mean, your progenitor was an expert pilot, but um… how can you be sure that those skills transferred over in the simulation process?  Maybe you just think you can pilot this thing, but we’re really just on our way to our fiery deaths?”  He was trying to add some humour to what was actually a very serious question.

  “I appreciate your vote of confidence Neil,” Wiremu said without looking away from the consoles in front of him, through which he was conducting the pre-flight checklists by thought.  “But rest assured that when my simulation was created, the original Wiremu’s experience was grafted onto the most sophisticated artificial intelligence piloting program in existence at the time.  This makes my capacities beyond his or the shuttle’s own autopilot, which could easily pull this landing off on its own without breaking an electronic sweat.   Does that satisfy you?” he asked sarcastically but with good humour.

  “I suppose so…” Neil answered, feigning residual misgivings.

  “Fantastic.” Wiremu answered while preserving an air of false irritation.  “Mission control we are ready on our end, we are requesting permission to launch.”

  “Acknowledged Shuttle One,” Ishtar answered from the bridge.  As the head of flight operations she was overseeing their departure and descent.  “You are go for launch.  Good Luck.”   She didn’t know what else to say.

  “Thank you Ishtar, Shuttle One out,” and with that Wiremu switched off the line.

  “It is a big moment,” In-Su offered.  “Maybe somebody should say something?” he offered.

  “Like what?” Neil asked him.

  “Well actually, nothing comes to mind now that I think about it,” In-Su admitted.

  “How bout… let’s go?” Sadhika offered.

  “Works for me,” Neil said.

   

  After unlocking the grapples and magnetic seals which held it firmly in place, gentle jets pushed the shuttle off of its mother ship and away from its docking port.   It manoeuvered itself safely away from the large rotating habitat ring which went around and around the long cylinder of the non-rotating central engineering section which housed the fusion reactor powering the ship, the many required fuel pods, and the four powerful ion engines which had brought them so far.

  Once at a safe distance, the shuttle positioned itself upside down and with its nose pointed in the opposite direction to that of their orbit.  A ten second burn from their main engines slowed them sufficiently that they began to fall out of their orbit, and further and further down into the thicker and thicker atmosphere of the planet out of its negligible density at the height which the New Horizon sailed through the sky.

  After completing their de-orbiting burn, the small craft flipped up and somersaulted so that its nose pointed around to face the direction of their now decaying orbit.   By the time they began hitting the first real wisps of atmosphere, they were already in their proper orientation, with their nose up and the heat shielding of the shuttle’s entire underside facing their direction of motion through the ever thickening atmosphere.

  The obscene kinetic energies of their orbital velocity began to gradually bleed away into heat energy as violent plasma flares erupted from underneath the shuttle.   The layers of heat shield material between the violent inferno and the simulants inside, were gradually ablated away by the superheated atmosphere plasma sanding it off.  This was the most dangerous part of their descent and for all intents and purposes, it was the dangerous part.  Any tiny imperfection in the heat shield would incinerate the entire shuttle nearly instantaneously.

   

  “We’re through,” Wiremu declared and informed mission control once they were finally through the violent burning phase of their descent and the regular flight surfaces of the shuttle became usable again.  The flight deck and mission control back on the ship both erupted with cheers.  They had survived this phase and that was worth celebration, but no one was forgetting the danger that still lay ahead.

  Wiremu began conducting long lazy s-curves to bleed off the still considerable kinetic energy of their air speed.  They were flying over a rocky coast line still quite a ways below them, and the landscape was distinctly blue out the windows on one side of the shuttle, and distinctly green out the other.

  “Ok,” Wiremu reported back to the ship, “The runway just popped up on the HUD… no visual yet though.

  “Understood.”

  The drone satellite system was not the only trick up the New Horizon’s launch tubes.   There were a variety of different industry drones which could be launched, descended ballistically, and then softly landed with rockets.  Much like the satellites, from their initial compact launch and descent configuration, once on the surface they unfurled to reveal all of their functional elements.   

  The paving drone was the first the ship had launched down to the planet, and it had only been deployed after Wiremu had chosen their landing site.  It contained within itself (or had the ability to create from available raw materials) everything necessary to lay down a minimum three kilometer long runway, given appropriate terrain and materials.  It was yet another display of their home planet’s amazing technological sophistication in autonomous programming and engineering.

  “Okay, I got it now.”  It was a clear day.  There were some clouds but they were sparse and the day was well lit and ever more beautiful the closer they descended upon it.  Wiremu had spotted the runway constructed by the drone in the jungle a few kilometers from the coast.  Just as he had pointed out the day before, it was right at the mouth of the strait’s inlet and several dozen meters above sea level.  He’d wanted their colony site to be right in the jungle for easy access to its game and lumber, as well as having close and easy access to a relatively calm part of the ocean which would provide maritime access to the rest of the planet.

  “We are now on final approach,” Wiremu reported to Ishtar up on the ship as he deployed the landing gear, and then turned to his friends who were with him on the flight deck.  “Hang in there guys, in theory the worst part is behind us.”

  Using regular flight surfaces, Wiremu glided the shuttle down towards the runway carved out of the jungle.  All of his commands were issued by thought, and to look at him he only appeared to be firmly gripping the sides of the console in front of him, and looking out through the window and ahead of them in deep concentration.  

  With unparalleled skill, he came down just ahead of the trees at the beginning of the runway, and with a not insignificant bump and jostling about, the rear wheels settled firmly onto the runway surface.  Then all that was felt was the sudden deceleration from the parachutes deploying behind them, and the last great bump as the nose landing gear came down onto the tarmac and the electromagnetic brakes in the wheels were finally added to the decelerating force of the parachutes.

  The shuttle finally came to a complete stop and there was a sudden and unexpectedly conspicuous silence.  They’d spent over a century and a half in motion, and now they were finally at rest.

  “Lady and gentlemen… welcome to Haven.”  The words ignited cheers in the shuttle and in orbit, and were remembered for generations.