Reunion: Chapter 1

  The year was 516.

  Well, actually there was some debate about that.  Some people still chose to use the original Earth calendar which would make the year 2839, but they were in the minority and became rather irritated if the similar arbitrariness of that calendar’s original day zero was pointed out to them.  Kathryn Barnes herself felt that of all the possible arbitrary starting points for their calendar, the day on which their ancestors first arrived on the planet Haven seemed most appropriate if one did have to be picked.  It was after all a rather hard and undeniable boundary plane in their history.

  However big that day must have been for them all that time ago though, Kathryn could only assume that today was the most historic day which she would ever be lucky enough to witness, let alone be a critical part of.  She was to be the first person launched into space after her civilization had lost the ability to do so less than a century after their arrival here.

  The generation ship which her ancestors had arrived on was still in orbit, but it had been abandoned there when they lost the ability to return to it.  It was kept operational in a support role to those on the surface for as long as was possible, but the time inevitably came to abandon it.  Its last vapours of fuel were used to boost it up to a high enough orbit that it would be as safe as it could be for eons.  Its frequent bright passage across the night sky served as an ever-present reminder to the people of Haven that they had come to this planet from another, and that it was their inalienable destiny to return to the stars once more.

  It was her personal destiny to be the first to return today.  Test missions had demonstrated the capacity of their new rocketry to get her there, and another person had already conducted low orbit tests.   She alone though would forever be remembered by her people as the first person to step foot on the New Horizon again.

  Docking with it had been tricky.  Although it was in a stable orbit, over the centuries it had worked up a slow multi axis spin which she had to account for.  It had been a tense operation, but she had successfully latched her capsule to the moving docking hatch.  Once secured, her vessel lazily spun along with the much larger craft it was connected to.

  On the threshold she held her breath before pushing herself through across.  The connection she’d linked between the ship and her capsule was supposed to transfer sufficient power to restart basic things like emergency lighting, but it hadn’t worked yet.  The powerful lights on either side of her helmet and the ambient light from the interior of her own spacecraft casting a haunting glow on the interior of the shuttle bay were the only light on offer.  If the ship were up and running, there would be simulated gravity up on the rotating habitat ring, but down here in the engineering section there had never been any.

  Grabbing onto a railing on the ship for the first time, she dared breathe again.  She stole a quiet moment to absorb the significance of being here, of holding a piece of the legendary ship in her hands, having such a tactile connection with her ancestors.

  “Commander Barnes?”

  “I’m good.   Everything is good up here, I’m just… taking it all in.”

  “Understandable Commander.  Unfortunately we need to report an unscheduled black out and we’re considering cutting your mission short.  Your thoughts?”

  “A black out…” Kathryn echoed back in curiosity.  She certainly hadn’t seen that coming.  Like clockwork, blackouts had occurred every one year, six days, eight hours, three minutes, and forty-two seconds for almost a hundred years now.   One occurring outside of that schedule was…  well, as mysterious as why they happened at all.  It was an unexplained phenomenon which had begun hundreds of years after they arrived on Haven, and which no accepted scientific theory could yet explain.   Every one year, six days, eight hours, three minutes and forty-two seconds, their sun darkened for exactly seven point three eight seconds.  It didn’t happen completely, but it was enough that it made one able to continuously look at their sun with the naked eye during that time without permanent damage.

  The last blackout was only a little under a month ago though.  This didn’t make any sense, she thought.  It couldn’t have anything to do with her being here, but it was certainly a damned inconvenient coincidence.

  “You really think that’s necessary?” Kathryn asked.

  “There are too many unknowns Barnes; we are dealing with an unknown disruption in the schedule of an unknown spatial phenomenon.”

  “I’m here.   I prefer to stay.  I’ll return ordered of course, or if something else comes of it, but I don’t see how there could be any connection.  We know there’s no radiological risks with the blackouts, I mean it only reduces the solar radiation reaching us.  I think my carrying on for now is an acceptable risk.”

  She waited anxiously while all the best people down at the new Tynes Spaceflight Centre reviewed their options.  She’d been training for this for so long.  No matter what happened now she was here.  After all her sacrifice and hard work, she’d got it done.  Nobody could take that away from her now, but she was still desperately excited to continue exploring further into the ship.   It would be such a disappointment to turn back now, such a waste.

  “Barnes we’re going to let you proceed but only provisionally.  If anything else happens, and we mean anything at all, even if it’s ambiguous, we’re going to recall you.  For now though you may proceed.”

  “Thank you,” she smiled, and continued to pull herself down the engineering section’s central access corridor.  It was her first time being weightless somewhere she could actually move around in, and she relished the feeling of flying along as she gently pushed and pulled herself from one railing to another.  She reached the central hub where the long cylindrical engineering section met the spokes which suspended the habitat ring about it; the axis about which the habitat ring was designed to spin.

  She slowly shined her helmet lights down each of the four spokes one at a time, but all four looked identical. 

  “I’m at the central hub…” she reported as she observed the markings which labeled which tube was which.  “Proceeding down tube three towards the bridge as planned.”

  “Understood.”

  As she started to push herself down the access tube, her radio broke in again.  “Barnes get out now.”  

  “Understood.”   The direct and unambiguous order triggered her military training.  She immediately turned and made for the ship as fast as she safely could without hesitation.

  On the way back to her capsule her team filled her in.  “We had another unscheduled black out, twelve minutes after the previous one.  We still don’t know what it means, but there’s definitely something going on and we just can’t have you exposed up there.”

  “I’m almost back to the capsule,” she reported.  She was disappointed but understood.  She was lucky they’d let her continue on at all after the first anomaly.   Whatever came next, her place in history was already secured.  She’d been so excited to see the rest of it though.  Maybe they’d let her come back.

  She stopped her flight on the threshold of her capsule.  She noticed that a ship display panel outside the airlock had been activated.   She tilted her head slightly to the side in confusion at what appeared to be an incoming communication request.   She didn’t know what to make of it.   Her own people certainly wouldn’t contact her this way, and the power transfer to the ship from her capsule was never intended to power up the ship’s onboard comm system.  

  It couldn’t be, and yet there it was.  It was as impossible and unexpected as the blackouts happening outside of their regular schedule.  She found herself wondering if there could be a connection.

  “Hey Tynes… I’m outside of the airlock to my capsule, and I’m seeing an incoming comm request on the ship’s airlock panel.  It’s weird, that system shouldn’t have any power, there’s nobody who could be making that call and no way for them to make it and yet… there it is.  Maybe it’s some kind of weird glitch…  I want to answer it and see what happens.”  

  “Please hold,” Tynes mission control requested while the occurrence she’d reported was discussed.  It certainly wouldn’t be difficult to accept the call if she was allowed.  Although the New Horizon’s systems were optimized for thought control via devices which her ancestors referred to as Brainchips, her own people were still many years away from recreating that level of neurocybernetics.

  “Barnes we’re going to allow you to proceed.  No one down here can explain it either.  We’re all watching your helmet’s video feed very carefully down here.”

  Nodding, she reached out to touch the answer button on the panel where it indicated, but just before her finger reached the panel, the comm request ended.  With a furrowed brow she lowered her thickly gloved hand to her side with a mixture of confusion and disappointment.  She then nearly leapt out of her space suit when she was startled by the comm request lighting up again.  After composing herself and taking a little moment to laugh at herself, she reached out to touch the screen again.

  A male face she found strikingly attractive appeared on the screen.  His strong jaw was clean shaven, and he appeared to be a man in his late forties.  His brown hair was neither particularly long nor short but was neatly cut.  She noticed how crisp and clean his white button up shirt seemed.  

  “Greetings,” the man offered with what felt like a little too much friendliness.

  “Greetings,” she tentatively parroted back without any idea what else to say.  She was speechless not only at the look of him, but at him being on the comm panel at all.

  “My name is Jaren.  I’ve come from the Eta Cassiopeia system. “

  “Eta Cassiopeia,” she muttered in repetition as she looked down through her face plate fishbowl.  A faint bell was ringing some significance in the deep mists of her long memory.  The fact that there were other humans out there was not particularly shocking.  It was well understood that her people had come from the planet humans had originally evolved on, and they’d always known that there had been other colony missions before their own and probably even after.  But long before her people had even landed here they’d lost contact with Earth, and they’d never been able to establish contact with any other human colonies.  They’d always presumed others were out there somewhere though.

  “Where are you?” Kathryn finally asked, trying to curb her accusatory tone as she composed herself and refocused on her new reality.  “Where are you transmitting from?  How did you power and access the New Horizon?”

  “I, well we, are in your star system,” The man answered.  “My small crew and I are on our way to your planet to say hello.   We’ve visited your system before, but we’ve resisted making contact until now.  We didn’t want to disturb your… development.  We wanted to wait until you reached a certain point before formally making contact.”

  “And what point was that?”

  “Being able to reach the New Horizon again.  We left monitoring equipment here which let us know when you’d managed to accomplish this.”

  “Ask him how he learned of this if he had to wait for a signal to be sent back to his own star system.” Mission control demanded in her ears.

  “How were you able to find out so fast?”  She was instinctively suspicious of him.  Maybe it was her training.  Maybe it was her instincts as a woman who’d made too many bad romantic choices not to second guess someone she was attracted to now.  Her eyes stayed narrow in accusatory scrutiny.  “Wait.  For that matter how did you get here so fast after finding out?”

  “We… have a technology which allows us to open up portals between stars, something we call an Escher Rift.  By harnessing the power output of an entire star for several seconds and then redirecting it to a particular point in space, we’re able to open an Escher which allows us to send both ships and communications through.” 

  “The blackouts…” she uttered as a lifelong civilizational mystery finally resolved itself.   She could only imagine what her team down on the planet was making of this.

  “The what now?” 

  “We… we call them blackouts; our sun dims for seven point three eight seconds every one year, six days, eight hours, three minutes and forty-two seconds.  That’s been your doing all along?”

  “Mmm, afraid so, yes.  We’re very sorry if that disturbed or concerned you, but the specific time is just the precise length of a year on our planet.  We programmed our monitoring devices to rift home annually to update us on your status.”

  “And the two unexpected ones today were your drone reporting new activity, and then you coming through in a ship.”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, that certainly does explain a lot.”  

  Jaren just smiled broadly, and Kathryn had to look away or start smiling like an idiot herself in response.  “I need to consult with my people,” she looked back up to tell him.  “Can you send another comm request like you did before in two minutes?”

  “Absolutely.   Until then.”  The panel screen returned to its inactive standby status.

  “Well Tynes, what do you think?” she asked.

  “It certainly would explain the blackouts,” a different voice affirmed in her helmet.  It was the voice of the Flight Director Krantz himself.  “Finally,” he added with a deliberate note of irritation.

  “Commander we need to know what they’re here for, what they want,” he instructed her.  “We also need to know if they know anything about what happened to Earth, and how many other colonies are out there.  There’s so much to ask…  We need to find out how their Escher technology works and how we can develop it for ourselves.  If they can do that there has to be other technologies they’ve developed which we might be able to get our hands on, it could change everything.  We especially need to know their military capabilities and intentions.”

  “Okay, I get it.”  She was frustrated with his now seemingly aimless musings.  As the panel lit up again with another comm request she said to Krantz: “let’s just start with asking what they want from us…” She touched the panel button again to open the channel.

  “Why are you here?” she asked with deliberate assertiveness.  She was trying to balance diplomacy with the subtlest undertones of confident aggression.  It was the same tone she put on when she had to be harsh with male underlings whom she thought might not adequately respect a female superior.  “What exactly do you want from us?  Why exactly did it matter to you when we reached this ship again?”

  He seemed a little taken aback by her assertiveness and she was pleased; she’d wanted to put him on his back foot a bit.  Attractive as he may be, her professionalism made her increasingly wary of the power imbalance resulting from him having all of the answers and her having only questions.

  Jaren leaned back in his chair, put his elbows up on his armrests and laced his fingers.   He let out a sigh.  “There’s many things we want.  I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t,” she informed him with an eyebrow quickly darted up and the flash of a smug smile.  Power balance restored, she happily thought to herself.  “But it’s Barnes.  Commander Kathryn Barnes of the Haven United Forces.”

  “Commander,” he acknowledged her with a nod.  “We seek friendship, open contact and collaboration with your world.”

  “Un hunh,” she grunted dismissively.  “And that’s all?” She asked, making it clear she knew it couldn’t be.  

  “No,” he admitted with pursed lips.  “Ultimately… we do also hope that you will grant us access to the New Horizon’s hard archives.”

  “Thank you for being honest,” she said, lightening up a bit.  While the answer still only raised further questions, it made it easier to believe his intentions were friendly.  Certainly they could have taken it without asking at any time.   “What do you want with them?”

  “My people…” he sighed with some noticeable sorrow which seemed sincere, “well, we quite regrettably and short sightedly declined to take most of Earth’s history or cultural heritage with us on our ship when we originally left Earth.  We… didn’t think it was important, but… well we were wrong.”  She found herself a little touched at how sincerely sad he seemed to be over his people’s error.  “We have made contact with one other colony since we’ve developed the rift technology, but unfortunately they made a similar error when they left.  We tried looking for answers on Earth itself, but…” he shook his head with what seemed to be great sadness.  “There was nothing to find there.”

  “Wait, you’ve been back to Earth?  What did you find??”  What had happened to Earth, and why it had gone dark halfway through their journey to Haven was the greatest mystery of all for Kathryn’s people, the inspiration for endless speculation and drama.

  “Well, we found humans for sure, but not much in terms of civilization.  Everything it had been was destroyed and decaying.  There had been some calamity, what exactly we never determined.  All of Earth’s storage was digital.  All storage media we came across had long decayed and become corrupted.”  He looked more directly at her.  “As it stands, in all the galaxy there exists only one known repository of the history, art, and culture of Earth.”

  “New Horizon’s physical archives…” she marveled.  “Of course.”

  For Haven it was a primary reason they had worked so hard to get back to the ship.   She could see what a lure it would be for Jaren’s people if they’d brought none of it along.  All digital storage media on the surface of Haven had degraded beyond repair long before they’d learned how to recreate anything comparable, but at least they had had it.  Had the chance to preserve a significant amount through copied out technical texts they didn’t really understand anymore and created an oral story telling tradition attempting to preserve the essential stories.  She could easily see how empty a fog the past would seem to a people without any of that.

  “Yes exactly,” he nodded.  “Your founders were very wise.  They had the foresight not only to take with them all of the wisdom and knowledge of Earth, but to preserve it in so robust a way that it could survive unpowered in a vacuum effectively for eternity.  To us… those archives have taken on something of a mystical quality; like the… wisdom and knowledge of the ancients.”  His demeanor seemed to reveal a genuine reverence.  She could almost detect a mistiness in his eyes from speaking of it.

  “You could have just taken it from us at any time.  You probably could have just copied it and left again without us ever knowing.  Why didn’t you?”

  “Because it’s yours,” he said with a shrug.  “It’s just not our way.    We knew it was safe where it was until we had the chance.  We felt it would be… disrespectful somehow to those who created it.  Not to mention to your people, the legitimate heirs of it.   It belongs to you; it’s your legacy, your endowment as a people, not ours.  Now that you are ready though, now that you have taken this great technological leap, we are… here to offer you a trade.”

  “Go on.” she invited.

  “We want to make a copy of the entire archives, and in exchange for your permission to do so, we are prepared to offer you access to our rift system.  You can use it to visit us, the Delta Pavonis colony, …Earth.  It would also give you access to a few rift platforms we’ve set up in other uninhabited systems we’ve made it to, not to mention all of the additional ones we have in development.

  “That’s uh… quite an offer,” Kathryn conceded while trying to keep her considerable excitement in check.  As a person oriented towards excitement, adventure, and discovery, it was all quite literally a dream coming true.

  “We certainly hoped it would be enticing,” Jaren said with a warm but knowing smile.

  Kathryn looked down and to her right while listening to distant voices debate how they should proceed.  Krantz’s voice finally broke through above the din of other voices.  “Tell him we accept in principle and ask him how he suggests we proceed.”

  “We are willing to pursue this, if cautiously for now.” she offered.  “What would the next step be?”

  Jaren smiled even wider at the good news.  “Well,” he answered, “it would be too onerous for us to bring all of the equipment we would need all the way here.  We would like to refurbish the New Horizon for you as a gesture of our good will.  My ship carries the resources to fuel and restart all of her power systems, update and restart the fusion core, magnetic shield, ion engines, etc.  We’ll get the habitat ring spinning again to get you some gravity, and even rebuild the arboretum and the rest of your life support system, the full package deal.”

  This was beyond her imagining.  Her own people had technologically slid backwards quite considerably after their arrival on Haven and were only now rediscovering basic rocketry.  They’d hoped to advance quickly after studying the engineering of New Horizon and pouring through its archives, but the idea of refurbishing the ship and setting sail in it again, only the maddest among them dared dream of such a thing.  She’d always regarded it as more an artefact than a vessel, a dead tomb as opposed to a dormant starship. 

  Her military sketicism kicked in.  “That all sounds fantastic of course, but what happens when you take our ship through your rift and we just never hear from you again?”

  She was surprised at how genuinely offended he appeared to be at the insinuation of such a betrayal, but it gave way to a smile.  “Well, you’ll just have to get to know us well enough to trust that we would never do that.  That being said, I’m sure that in time we can find ways to satisfy your suspicions.”

  “I look forward to that,” Kathryn allowed herself to offer with genuine warmth for the first time.  Something about him… her instincts suggested that betraying them had genuinely never crossed his mind.

  “We could take some of you with us on the journey.  You could help us and learn along the way,” he continued.  “And when we’re all done with the archives you can re-commission the ship and use it however you wish.  It would be your gateway to the rift system until you develop another vehicle, and you could explore your own system and others throughout the rift network.  

  “But first, while you and your leaders enjoy all of the lavish trappings of an official diplomatic first contact visit from Kobol, we would like to get to work very carefully and methodically copying all of the information stored in the archives.”

  “That may be premature I’m afraid,” she admitted.  “I’m certain our president will want to meet you in person and put some finer points on the details of our arrangement, but I’m sure you will be able to work it out and get started before long.”  She was trying to do and say all of the right things in her unexpected new role as a diplomat, while also struggling to contain her growing excitement.  “Where are you in our system at this point?” 

  “We are still quite near to your star.  Unfortunately, Eschers can only be initiated very near to one.  We have rather effective engines though, but it will still take us approximately six of your days to arrive at your planet.”

  “Haven,” Kathryn remarked with a larger note of pride than she’d expected now that she was meeting people alien to it.  “We call it Haven.”

  “Of course,” he conceded with a deferential smile, “and tell your people not to worry.   We are a small ship on a diplomatic mission and there are only four of us.  Though advanced from your perspective, our vessel has limited armaments and just one of your nuclear tipped missiles could easily destroy us, and we certainly approach with the weight of that understanding.  We pose no threat to any of your people.”

  “I understand.   I will strive to convey that to my superiors.  How do we proceed?”

  “Well as I said, it will take us six days to reach you.  Our ship has the capacity to freely land and return to orbit, so we can just meet you on the surface if your people don’t insist on sending anyone up to us first.  In the meantime, as soon as a hard agreement has been reached, we can start sending teams through to get to work on your ship.  When it’s ready your people can assemble a team to take command of her, and we can escort you through to our system.”

  “Thank you Jaren, I will communicate all of this to my people.  We will be in touch.”

  “It was very nice to meet you Commander Barnes,” he said with a smile in which she detected something more than mere friendliness.  It made her feel warm, and she hid it as well as she could.

  “You as well, Jaren.”

  She touched the panel to close the channel and brought her gloved hands up to grab firmly onto the bulkhead in front of her as she lowered her head and let out a long sigh.

  “Tynes?” she asked.

  “Yes Commander?”

  “Why do they think we have nuclear tipped missiles?”

  “I’m afraid that’s classified Commander.”

  Kathryn closed her eyes and she shook her head.  ‘Fucking idiots…’