Reunion: Chapter 9

  As Jaren predicted, it took the better part of three days to retrofit the New Horizon.   Given the ship’s status as an historical artifact as well as a starship, an orbital storage facility was converted to house the components of New Horizon which would need to be removed and replaced.  The pieces belonged to Haven and when they decided what to do with them, the pieces would be there and theirs to retrieve.  

  The large ion drives had to be removed first in order to be replaced with the Koboli anti-matter engines.  Not much integration between the systems was required.  Quite a few of the now empty round hydrogen and xenon storage tanks immediately aft of the engines were removed to make room for the anti-matter storage tanks required to supply the engine.  Since they were self-contained units, the most challenging part to accomplish so quickly was programming the module which would translate the computer interface between the entirely different programming languages used in the different world’s technologies.

  But with a tremendous effort, the upgrades were now complete, and the physical archives were transferred to an orbital outpost where several dozen automated reading machines could be used instead of just the three manual readers the New Horizon was equipped with onboard.

  The three teams of four found themselves splitting into four specialist teams quite organically.  Jaren and Kathryn teamed up with Teresa in a command and oversight role, while Felix and Irvina teamed up with Francis who turned out to also be an engineer.   Deirdre, the humanities specialist they’d brought along with them, teamed up with Keri and Xion.  Something about Deirdre struck Kathryn as unattractive and the observation always left her feeling bad about herself and wishing she were less judgmental.  She couldn’t put her finger on what exactly it was, but it was as though her features somehow just didn’t quite match up.  She seemed like quite a sweet woman though, and Kathryn liked her otherwise.

  Also a Galway, it turned out that Deirdre was Teresa and Francis’ daughter.  So far she seemed to be getting along quite well with Keri and Xion, and all three seemed to be getting along quite well, and would spend hours on end comparing notes on the differences between their respective cultures.  Something magical happened when people of similar interests and research backgrounds got together, especially with humanities experts, whereby virtue of being part of different cultures, each was both a teacher and a subject of study to the others.

  Anastasius Rossini, who preferred to be called Ana, was the personal physician assigned to the ambassadors, and had been as eager as any of the Roman delegation to be a part of the expedition which was finally being sent to investigate the mystery of Earth.  She had a certain flair to her, and her green eyes and fair skin were well complimented by her auburn hair.  Like Elim and Nadelle, in addition to being a medical doctor, she also had a background in biology with a specialty in genetics.  The three of them seemed to be getting along quite well for the most part, if not engaging with each other as eagerly as Keri, Xion, and Deirdre.  The intimacy between Elim and Nadelle created an inadvertent third wheel situation, but so far had amounted to little more than a few awkward movements.

   

  The morning of the launch, Kathryn was consulting with Teresa in the captain’s office when Jaren arrived to speak to her.  The office was rather unremarkable for that of a commanding officer.  It was not opulent or status conscious the way it might have been in other fleets.  It was just a plain office really, with a 2-meter-wide glass window in the floor through which the planet occasionally passed through the field of view as they rotated around the central axis in the habitat ring.  Window views were at a high premium on the ship given that they could only exist on the exterior of the habitat ring, and if the office betrayed any status over any other, it was the privilege of the view.

  “Commander Barnes?” Jaren asked as he knocked on the frame of the open door.  “Or should I say Captain?” he smiled.  “I hear you got a promotion?”

  “Yeah well, can’t exactly have a lowly commander heading the only ship in the fleet,” she observed with playful dryness.

  “You certainly seem to have earned it,” Teresa offered.  Kathryn only respectfully nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment.

  “What’s up Jaren?” Kathryn asked.

  “We’re all done,” he informed her with contentment.  “We’re doing final checks on everything but barring any problems turning up, we’re good to go.”  He entered the office and sat himself at the second chair in front of the desk beside Teresa.  “You’ve got yourself quite a ship here now, haven’t you?  If you’re only going to have one, this is certainly a good one to have.   Your people are now free to travel rather quickly to any planet where we’ve set up an Escher Rift.”

  “Hard to imagine that a month ago just getting to orbit seemed like a nearly impossible feat,” Kathryn reflected.

  “Well, your people are ambitious.  I’m sure before long you’ll have a whole fleet of starships.  You’ve got a lot of learning to do, but I have absolute faith in… your people.”

  “Thank you.   I was just telling the ambassador here that I’ve been in contact with Haven and preparations are being made to send a diplomatic mission to both Kobol and Roma.  As soon as Kobol can spare an appropriate ship we can begin the process.”

  “Well, if we weren’t heading off on this wild gargan chase you could certainly use this ship to ferry people around.”

  “I know, we- wild gargan?”

  “Oh uh, a somewhat sizeable flightless bird on Kobol.”

  “Mmmkay… well in any case, you’re right.  In fact, Haven is desperate to get New Horizon back to Haven after our current mission.  With the shuttles you’ve provided us there are so many people who are incredibly anxious to come up and see this ship for themselves.  There’s still so much to learn about it.  And now with the re-fit, there’s even talk of formally recommissioning it.  But,” she emphasized, “the anxiousness to do all of that remains eclipsed by our need to find out what happened to Earth.  Everyone seems in agreement that all that can wait when weighted against our current mandate.”

  “It’s too bad Roma still hasn’t developed or accepted any appropriate ships,” Jaren reflected.  “If they had, you could exchange embassies without our help.”

  Teresa seemed a touch insulted but remained diplomatic.  “Not everyone is as comfortable being as reckless with developing their technology as your people can be Jaren.  Kathryn,” she said, turning to the now Captain Barnes, “my people certainly were offered Kobol technology as freely as your people were but we declined, and I recommend you do as well.”

  “Oh?” Kathryn inquired with all due concern.

  “Oh it all works fine I’m sure, but it is dangerous to rely on technology you do not understand.  My people value the process of methodical inquiry itself.  We appreciate being pointed in the right direction, but prefer to discover and develop things for ourselves, so that we understand what we build and use as well as anyone.”

  Kathryn nodded her understanding, but Teresa seemed to feel the need to continue.

  “Yes, your ship is now equipped with anti-matter engines, but you’ve already admitted you don’t even know what anti-matter is.  What if the systems break down and stop working?  What if they break down in such a way that puts the ship at risk and you can’t even tell?  Do you know that if the magnetic containment bottle the anti-matter fuel is stored in fails for even a fleeting moment this entire ship will instantaneously vanish in a titanic explosion?  Yes, on this trip Jaren and his people have been kind enough to come along and assist in case you run into any trouble, but they can’t assign people to assist you on a permanent basis, and even if they could and would, you can never be fully independent now that you use their technology.”

  “Well to be fair,” Kathryn observed, “we didn’t really understand how this ship worked even before they upgraded it.”

  Teresa laughed aloud.  “Fair point my dear, fair point.  I only meant to convey that my people place as much value in the process of development as they do in the result, in the accomplishment of discovery as much as what a discovery allows.  My people are patient.  As long as Jaren’s people are willing to offer transport when they are able to, we happily accept their generosity, but we will also not complain when our schedules and interests do not align.  This is why we were so delighted to discover that your interests in Earth were as serious as ours.”

  “We are not immune to your sensibilities Ambassador,” Jaren pointed out.  “In fact, if you’ll recall it was our attempt to understand your reluctance to accept what was offered, that led us to wait to make contact with Haven, to allow them the opportunity to rediscover the New Horizon on their own without us.  Once we had the opportunity to make contact, we were of course desperate to, but you taught us what we might be robbing them of if we gave them so easily what they’d been working so hard for so long to achieve on their own.”

  “I am pleased to have had any role I might have in that decision.  It was the right one.” Teresa said with certainty in her position.

  “What do you think Captain Barnes?” Jaren said with smile when he got to call her captain for the first time, “were we right to wait?”

  “In retrospect… yes, I believe you were.  If you’d made contact earlier it wouldn’t have seemed like we’d been deprived of anything right away, but in time… yes, I do believe in retrospect we would have had that sense.  However Ambassador, while my people will indeed want to thoroughly understand whatever technology we routinely employ, I don’t think we will place the same premium on discovering the science behind that technology for ourselves.  We collectively have had from the beginning a sense of… trying to regain a technological competency we once had and lost.   Even if Kobol technology far surpasses New Horizon’s original level of technology, I believe we will want to catch up as quickly as possible.  It’ll be important to us to understand the technology so we can use it safely and responsibly in transforming our society… but if it’s out there, just on offer and waiting for us then no,” she shook her head, “no way in hell we’d be able to resist that.  We have an ambitious and adventurous spirit.  I understand and completely respect your point of view Ambassador, but I doubt we’ll ever share it.

  “In that vein Jaren,” Kathryn said, turning to him, “Haven has asked me to clarify that it is acceptable to send some of our best and brightest scientists to learn about your technology along with our embassy so they can teach others back on Haven.”

  “It is more than acceptable Kat- Comman-“ he smiled awkwardly, “Captain, if fact after our experience with Roma it would be a relief,” he uttered.  Realizing how his words might offend, he put his hand on Teresa’s shoulder.  “I apologize Ambassador, that didn’t come out the way I’d intended.”

  “I suspect it did,” she surmised with a sigh, “but regardless, I’m pleased for your people that you now seem to have the playmate you’ve always hoped for.”

  Jaren accepted the jab without comment, seeming to consider it fair retribution for his own inadvertent attack.

  “The ambassador is certainly correct that none of my people adequately understand the workings of this ship yet.  While I will be in command of this mission overall, I would like you to consider yourself in command of the operations of the ship, my… executive officer of sorts.”

  “Understood Captain.”

  “Other than this, I don’t consider any official ranking to be necessary between any of us.  My own people have ranks in our service of course, but generally I consider our three teams to be collaborating equally.”

  “Very well,” Teresa agreed.

  “Understood,” Jaren acknowledged.

  “Although…” she considered in afterthought.  “You know on its original voyage there was a tradition of triad on this ship, of having a captain, a matriarch, and a patriarch as the top command structure of the ship.  We are three teams coming together, each with a leader, so it only seems appropriate.   I the captain, Jaren the patriarch, and ambassador if you’ll accept the honorary title, the matriarch.”

  “What did the titles mean?” Teresa asked.

  “Well captain is pretty self-evident,” Kathryn suggested, “but the others I haven’t any idea, perhaps just elected father and mother figures.  I think it had a nice sense to it.  For our purposes though it’ll just denote that we three are the leaders of our own teams but working collaboratively.”

  “Works for me,” Jaren offered.

  “I agree as well,” Teresa added.

   

  They departed with surprisingly little fanfare.  Kathryn received an obligatory communication with President Mortensen wishing her a safe and prosperous journey, and she likewise received a recorded message from President Sato back home reminding her of what a grave responsibility she had been burdened with, but accompanied by an expression of her confidence that she was up to the job.  

  She sat on the captain’s chair in the centre of the bridge and listened while her crew called out ready status on all of the relevant systems.  In addition to the engines and environmental upgrades, the Koboli had also provided them with a year’s worth of food including fresh food which would spoil relatively soon if not eaten, food which would last a couple of weeks, and long-term emergency rations which would remain edible for hundreds of years.

  She felt the weight of the moment as her crew finished calling out ready statuses, and when they’d finished the bridge crew turned in their chairs to look at her expectantly.  She gave the order and they all looked about them a little nervously as the ship pointed itself in the correct orientation to expand its orbit around the planet and brought the engines up to full power.  They accelerated remarkably quickly and got further and further away from Kobol until on the final pass they pointed the ship in the opposite direction of the planet’s orbit around the sun.  They gradually slowed in their orbit around the star and fell ever faster in towards the gravity well of the sun.

  Once on course Kathryn ordered the shift rotation for the twenty hours it would take to reach the star as she marveled at the power of their new engines.  She assigned three shifts and encouraged everyone to try to get a good sleep in before they reached the rift.  She took the first watch, and then after seven hours in the captain’s chair was relieved by Teresa.  She headed to her quarters, got undressed, and laid naked on her bed staring at the ceiling.  She’d never been comfortable wearing anything while sleeping, but now it seemed even the comfort of her nudity would be insufficient to whisk her away to sleep.

  There was just too much on her mind, too much anticipation.  She grew increasingly frustrated, knowing that she’d have to pay later for her inability to sleep now.  Her body betrayed not a hint of fatigue, only the sharp awareness of a constant low level of adrenaline.  She found her thoughts cycling between Jaren, Earth, her new rank, Jaren, Kobol, Roma, Jaren…   ‘Dammit,’ she chastised herself.   ‘Gotta do better than that Kat,’ she insisted of herself, ‘for both our sakes.’  

  She kept thinking about the other night with Jaren, how she wished he’d never had to leave her bed in that residence, how unlike her experience with him that night had been compared to any other of the other (admittedly few) men she’d been with before, and how much she was growing to resent their present need for subtlety.   The feeling of his skin against hers was unlike any she’d ever known, and she craved to return to that moment again.   

  Being with him now, pretending they were just colleagues and close friends was agonizing.   Every other thought when she was with him was how much she wanted to take him to bed again.  She wished they could just get on with it and be together, if not just share a suite on the ship.  Being partners in command now though… it made such behaviour feel as inappropriate as it could be.  She was beginning to wonder if she’d made a terrible miscalculation allowing anything to happen at all.  

  With her thoughts cyclically racing between Jaren and the mission, it seemed inconceivable that she’d be able to sleep, but after several hours of staring at the ceiling, she surprised herself by being able to fall asleep for at least a few hours, and later on that day she was appreciative for at least that.

   

  They passed through the rift without incident, and the Roman and Havenite crew felt an odd and unexpected feeling as they exited the rift into the Solar System.   For all of them there was a sense of reverence, as though they had just stepped into a graveyard.  This was the place of their ancestors; it was Mount Olympus, home of the gods.  It was the birthplace of all that they were and had become.  And now it would take them nearly three full days to scale the celestial mountain and reach the home of their species.

  Despite their enthusiasm for the mission, it didn’t seem as monumental to Jaren and his crew.  Maybe it was having been privy to all available information on Earth for a while, maybe it was having already visited other star systems several times already.   But to the rest of them it was a place of myth and mystery, a place they’d been working to find their way back to for hundreds of years, to answer the greatest mystery of all time.  Why did Earth go dark so many years ago?   What catastrophe, what force could have made them abruptly stop transmitting out of nowhere one day with no warning or explanation.  Now they would finally have the chance to find out, after half a millennium of waiting.   If Kathryn thought she’d had trouble sleeping before, it was nothing compared to the anxiety she now felt being on the other side of the rift.  

  They had figured out how to use some of the original New Horizon devices they’d found left on the ship.  The most useful were the portable hand terminals the ship’s computers informed them were called ‘scrolls’, devices which seemed to come in three different sizes.   They were ship interfaces which consisted of two narrow posts which could be pulled apart to unravel and reveal a flexible double-sided screen.  The screen went rigid when pulled apart to the desired length and dimensions, and could interface with any ship system.  

  So far, they’d only had time to load the basic operations programs into the ship’s computers, so there wasn’t much for the scrolls to access yet, but it was still convenient to at least be able to easily interface with the ship’s systems which they had gotten running.  It appeared that they were primarily designed to be operated by thought control, but they were nonetheless quickly figuring out how to use them with screen touch controls on the screen.

  She’d heard that the original crew had had devices implanted in their heads which allowed them to operate the technology by thought control, but that was one of the first technologies her people had lost the ability to use.  They certainly couldn’t make new implants for themselves, but they also didn’t have the ability to extract them from their dead and re-implant them in others.  Even if they could though, the technology they might control by thought control mostly stopped functioning soon after anyway.  

  Kathryn had never thought much about the ancient technology the original settlers were alleged to have.  She often wondered what was real historical record and what was mythic magic.  Those early years were a chaotic time and reliable records were hard to come by.  Thought control had always struck with her though as something much more likely to be myth than reality, but here in her hand was the evidence that it was a real technology that really existed and was widely used.  It was hard for her to imagine what it would be like to be able to interact with technology in that way.  She just couldn’t imagine.  She had a moment of pride looking forward to the scholars of her world being able to analyze this ship and finally have the chance to definitively discriminate fact from fiction around those early days.

  In her playing around with her scroll in the long hours of waiting, she’d figured out how to access the onboard telescopes which she hadn’t even know were a part of the original design.  When she’d activated them, they emerged from the structure of the central engineering section and began feeding data to her scroll.  The user interface was remarkably user friendly, and while she’d discovered that the system was designed in such a way that four ship borne telescopes could somehow work together to render a sharper image than any of them could individually.  For this to work tough, the ship had to be pointed at the target in such a way that all four telescopes faced it square on.  With the ship under power, it had to remain either pointed at Earth on their approach or away from it when it was time to slow down.

  So, while she could only look at Mercury and Venus with individual telescopes (as she had spent many hours doing so), the multi-telescope ‘interferometry’ mode which she really didn’t understand could indeed work for looking at Earth, and she was thrilled and humbled at the incredible degree of detail this view of the world provided.  She’d clued in the others to the feed and collectively they had logged innumerable hours staring at the live feed and wondering.  They’d found a conference room which had an entire wall for a display screen and fed the data to it.  Hours passed in the room as people rotated through staring at the live feed for hours, wondering, dreaming, speculating, imagining…  

  What would they find?  Would it feel more familiar on the surface to them than their own colony planets or were they truly people of other worlds visiting an alien place?  What would the people still left on Earth be like?   Kobol’s basic reconnaissance scans showed that there were indeed humans (or something like them) on the surface, but not much more than that was known.  They detected no technology they deemed interesting.  Were they survivors with living memory of their once great civilization, or were they people with no such memory and only wonderment at the ruins which must still persist on the surface?  So many questions to answer.

  After what seemed like an eternity, New Horizon inserted itself once again into orbit around the Earth.  After being away for so long away, the ship had finally returned home.  Its journey had come full circle, and neither it nor its crew knew what lay in store for them down on the surface after so long an absence.