Arrival: Chapter 30

  The roar of the shuttle’s powerful rocket engines died off as abruptly as they always did, and its passengers once again experienced the weightless feeling of bumping back and forth between seat and restraints.  There was always, even in so extreme a situation as this, such a peaceful and transcendent feeling of release upon arrival in orbit.  After the energetic violence which inserted one into it, the contrasting relative absence of stimuli; the silence, the loss of weight, and the blackness out the window above the planet was always striking.   This sensation was simultaneously overwhelming when paired with the view of the sprawling expanse of the planet beneath them, forever forbidding the shuttles inhabitants from shaking the overwhelming sense of scale wrought on their senses; their absolute smallness and insignificance in the grandest of contexts.

  “We’re in the right orbital trajectory, but we need to catch up with them,” Wiremu told the others.  He lit the much smaller and weaker orbital jets which were nestled between the three more massive and intimidating insertion boosters.  Even with these smaller thrusters he only needed a twenty second burn to sufficiently accelerate his relative speed to inevitably catch up with the mother ship which was currently over the horizon.  The shuttle then continued on with its increased velocity, steadily closing the distance to the ship as displayed on the flight deck’s HUD.

  The shuttle had thrusters which could adjust its three dimensional orientation in space, but to significantly increase or decrease their orbital velocity, such as was necessary to catch up with the New Horizon, these smaller rocket jets were required.  These same rockets were the ones which were just powerful enough to sufficiently slow the shuttle’s orbital velocity for it to fall back down into the atmosphere instead of continuing to sail over top of it.

  As they gradually caught up with the ship, when it came over the horizon it was still too far away to be able to see with the naked eye.  Their displays were able to indicate the exact moment for them, but Neil still pointed the New Horizon out with his finger when he was able to see it for himself, and he was only able to spot it as early as he was because of their instruments telling him exactly where to look.  The landscape before them was so vast, and the ship he was looking for so relatively small, that it would have otherwise taken much longer for him to be able to successfully point out the ship without risking only imagining having seen it.

  “Look,” Wiremu said as he pulled up the other shuttle’s location on the display.  “The other shuttle’s already docked.”

  It was still too far away for them to be able to make out the much smaller shuttle pressed against the mother ship, but the crosshairs on their screen betrayed its presence nonetheless.

  Neil opened a general communication request to the ship.  “Aset?  Asari?   Please respond…”  Silence.  “This is Shuttle One, calling anyone on the New Horizon, please respond.”

  He opened a general hail and tried again.  “This is Neil Sagan aboard Shuttle One in orbit and on approach.  I am trying to reach anyone who can answer; I repeat anyone onboard the New Horizon, please respond.”  There was only silence in response.

  “Nothing.” Neil stated as he thought the channel closed, more to himself in frustration than to any of the others present, all of whom could hear the absence of response as well as he could.  There was no response, but as they moved closer they could begin to resolve Shuttle Two with their own eyes; it was docked at its port in the central engineering section.

  “There should be over a hundred and fifty people left on the ship…” Armina offered.   “It should mostly be the young and the old left at this point, and most of them must be non-aligned in all of this and just… hiding out.  I’m sure they would have responded if they’d heard the hail.”

  “Unless…” In-Su began, but he couldn’t finish his thought.  All four in their mind filled in the blank with horrible scenarios in which there was nobody left to respond. 

  “They must have blocked the ship to ship comm channels…” Wiremu speculated.

  Neil turned to Wiremu.  “Well boss, what’s the play?”  Wiremu reached back, grabbed his headrest, and pulled as he stretched out his legs and feet.  He was thinking.

  Much to their surprise, before he could come up with an answer, the comm line opened and they heard Aset’s panicked voice.  It was just her voice; she was not transmitting any video.  Even if Asari had locked out ship to ship communications, as matriarch Aset’s command codes would have been able to override the lockout for her own use.

  “Neil?   We need your help,” she stated, sounding panicked.  She was whispering, and she appeared to be just outside the heavy door to the bridge.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “It’s… it’s bad.  Halley is cutting through the airlock, I don’t even know how he’s doing it!  But, but… we hardly have any weapons left, most of the people left on the ship now are children!!  We sent every able bodied adult down to take the second site, we… we don’t have anything left!”  She was panicking, almost hysterical.

  “Aset why won’t Asari answer us?”  In-Su asked.   “Why are you talking to us in secret?”

  “He… he doesn’t trust you.  He thinks you must have helped Halley to win the battle, he’s worried that you’re just here now to help him retake the ship, he’s… he’s not himself.”

  “I should hope not!!”  Wiremu exclaimed with a rising indignant anger.  Armina put her hand on his knee as if to soothe him a little and remind him that getting angry wouldn’t help the situation.  This tender gesture from Armina surprised Wiremu a little, but he was too distracted to give it much thought at the moment.

  “I’m… I’m scared,” she said.  “I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

  “Unlock the other airlock, Aset.” Armina softly and compassionately implored her.   “These men are here to help you.”

  “You’ll… you’ll help us?” she asked, in some nexus between surprise, hopefulness, and fear.

  “Absolutely not.”  Wiremu answered almost reflexively, and in contradiction to what Armina had said.   The other three in the shuttle looked at him in bewilderment.  “No Aset.   We will not help you defeat Halley.   We are not going to pick sides here.  We have not, and we will not.  But I promise you that if you let us onboard, if you unlock the airlock for us, we will do whatever we can to protect and secure the mission.  The mission, Aset.  Don’t you remember?"

  “Yes.” She replied.  As a child, she had believed in the mission blindly and in a way, she still did.   She’d been taught since before she could remember that it was the meaning of life itself, that it was more important than any of their individual lives.  It was the reason why they lived and died; it was the singular purpose of their existence.  With everything that had happened since, her faith had somehow become confused and corrupted.  She’d allowed herself to be misled into believing that everything her and Asari had done had been in service of the sacred mission, but the death of her only child, and now Wiremu’s harshness, had just shaken her to a horrid realization.  

  She could see now in agonizingly clear detail how she had betrayed the mission and violated its very spirit.  She thought that her and her people were the last true and virtuous defenders of the faith, but now she could see that her side’s actions were as much a betrayal of the sacred mission as her enemy’s were.  A part of her could now remember that something far more important than the immediate conflict was at stake.  The monumental efforts of hundreds of lives, and a dream hundreds of years in the making, was all about to be unceremoniously thwarted and cast aside.   Wiremu and his people were the embodiment of everything of value which she could remember.  She now understood why there were simulants included in the mission, why they existed at all; they were here to remind them of who they were if they lost their way; they were prophets sent to them by their sacred founders.

  “That means,” Wiremu continued, seemingly able to see in her eyes the profound revelations taking place, “that once onboard our goal will be to end this conflict with as few lives lost, and as little damage to mission property as possible.   That is all I can offer you; it’s all I would ever promise.”

  Aset started to cry.  She knew what she had to do, but it required her to betray her husband and patriarch.   As much as she understood that it was ultimately worse to be betraying the mission, it was still hard for her.   It was taking time for her revelation and newfound understanding to cascade its way through her psyche and recalibrate all of her decision making algorithms.  The hardest part for her, was the realization of her personal blame in everything which had happened.  She’d stood in solidarity with her husband for all of the terrible decisions which had brought them to this moment.  She’d stood beside him even when she was uncertain, even when she thought he was taking things too far.  

  “Asari…” In-Su implored her, “consider the alternative.  Of the options currently available to you, which will you least regret tomorrow… and for the rest of your life?”

  A deep part of her was now agonized to understand that now, after a lifetime of hate, her side was just as responsible for everything that had happened as Halley’s side was.  What now left her truly chilled though, was her fear that her husband was at this point too far beyond reach.  She knew that he was too far gone in his anger and self-righteousness to ever be able to come back from the brink the ways she was; she knew he could not be reached the way she had been.  Aset had wanted to find her way back, but she knew that Asari had no such desires.  He was at war.  The why didn’t matter anymore; all that mattered to him now was winning, vanquishing his enemies and defeating those who had ever dared to defy him.   She had seen it in his eyes, and it was the fear he instilled in her as a result which prompted her to sneak away and contact the sims in the first place.  She was now also terrified of how he’d respond when he found out what she’d done.

  “I don’t want to risk trying to do it remotely…” she stated despondently, “I’ll meet you at the airlock.”  Her voice was shaking.  “What’s your ETA?”

  Wiremu looked down at his instruments display.  “Approximately six minutes.”

  “I… I think I can make it by then… and before Halley gets through.”

  “Aset you’re doing the right thing,” Neil tried to reassure her, “I promise.” 

  “I know.”   She didn’t seem particularly comforted to know it though.  “I’m gonna hold you to that six minutes Wii.”

  “Asari, I swear I do not have it in me to let you down.  I will see you in six minutes.”

   

  Now close enough, Wiremu flipped the shuttle up end over end so that they were now upside down relative to the position they had previously been in, with the planet up above their heads and the New Horizon somewhere behind them.  He thought activated the twenty second burn which would cancel the speed he’d added to their orbit to catch up with the mother ship in the first place.  Once the short burn was complete, their speed relative to the ship was zero and they orbited perfectly in parallel with the larger craft.  

  When he once again flipped the shuttle up and over, they again found themselves facing the ship but this time holding a steady relative position a little over a kilometer behind it on the port side.  Using the far less powerful compressed air thrusters, Wiremu slowly closed the gap.  He then cancelled this more minute forward motion again with the forward facing thrusters in the shuttle’s nose.  

  As nimbly as any master who had performed such an operation so many times they could practically do it in their sleep, Wiremu slid the shuttle into position in the long crevice between two of the four long narrow engineering section cylinders until it was holding position just off of the airlock.  With a few final bursts of air, the daughter craft gently rested against the airlock, and strong magnetic seals held it in place while manual hooks and cranks mechanically anchored the two vehicles into one jointly orbiting assembly.  The whole operation could have been performed on autopilot alone, but it could be argued that Wiremu’s abilities, as a sim based on a veteran pilot and subtly augmented with an autopilot’s capacities, made his abilities superior to any autopilot known to exist.  

  Whether or not this meant that he himself was the most sophisticated autopilot in the known universe, was a question that neither he nor the human being he was a simulation of, had or ever would have had the slightest bit of interest in considering.  They just weren’t that kind of man.