by A. Omukai
She switched the console off, stepped back, frowned at the two Aes Sidhe circling each other in the air, similar to Gliese 667 A and B, then turned around and made her way off the bridge.
“You two,” she growled, “better get your act together, or it’s your fault when I run this ship into a sun, because your kindergarten fighting distracts me from my work.”
The ruckus ended abruptly.
***
“Please come in.”
Deirdre entered Brilann’s room hesitantly, looked around and smiled at the cat. She looked at Brilann, who walked over to his seat and sat down.
“I’m finished with my preparations,” she said.
“I’m glad to hear that. Can I see the paraphernalia?”
“Of course, here you are.”
She reached for her bag and handed it to him, then remembered that he couldn’t see and put it right in his hands.
He opened the bag, pulled out the runes and the wood and let them glide through his fingers, while staring into the distance.
“I was thinking, I might have been harsh earlier today. I’ve been alive for so long, I sometimes forget how it is to be young, full of energy and curious.”
She didn’t know how to react, so she stayed silent.
“You know that this is hazel wood?”
Her eyes widened.
Hazel was not what she wanted to bring. She needed pine to add a movement component to the spell. The other two runes were just there to complete the concept. Movement was at the core of the spell, so she needed a different channelling item.
“Oh,” was all she could say. Not very original.
The old druid smiled. Not what she had expected.
“I’d happily let you try to see what happens if you do it with this combination, but I’d rather do that from a distance…”
After all that had happened today, experimentation was not what she needed. Yet another disappointing failure.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you know what went wrong and why. I might be one reason you picked it in a hurry. Get the correct material and come to the bridge. I’ll be there to watch the jump.”
No, the old arch druid wasn’t to blame for this. It had been her fault, yet again. His reassurance was comforting, though, so she didn’t comment on it.
“Thank you. I’ll be on the bridge in…” She checked the time. “Twenty minutes. To be honest, I can’t wait to get out of here and move on.”
“I can imagine,” the arch druid said.
A moment later, she walked down the hallway towards her room, lost in thought again. She wouldn’t let brooding become her default state, that much was clear.
6
Jump to Gliese 667
The bridge lay in silence. Brilann was there, of course, and the captain sat on his chair on the little elevated platform in the centre of the room. One of the two seats of the helm was manned.
Fionnlagh was at his communications desk, on his hilariously oversized chair, which had obviously been made for human staff.
Brilann stood unassumingly behind the captain’s chair, his hands clasped behind his back.
Deirdre shifted from one foot to the other, then strode forward to the open space in front of the captain’s chair.
The captain, her navigator’s seat and the helm formed a triangle, in which she positioned herself.
Her little bag of paraphernalia hung from the belt of her uniform. She didn’t need it yet. Clad in military fatigues, she probably didn’t look like a druid at all.
“The ceremony begins,” she said, starting the consecration of time.
Her hands drew a circle on the ground, and she stepped inside.
This circle was now her grove, she could feel it breathe magic in and out on its own.
Deirdre turned around slowly, drawing additional circles into the air. Four of them, one in each corner. She didn’t feel like she had to invoke the guardians of the corners, but it wouldn’t hurt either. This was only symbolism anyway. What came next was really important.
She closed her eyes.
“Where am I in this body?”
Her concentration turned inward, trying to focus on the seat of her essence. She found this sense of self between her eyes, a small dot occupying only a fraction of the body she inhabited. She returned the mantra.
“Where am I in this body?”
Her concentration strengthened, the point behind her forehead gained sharpness. The fringes of her self became clearer and more defined.
She now had a very exact idea of the location.
Time to move on.
She slowly kneeled down, touched the ground with her hands. Her fingertips felt the cold steel, smooth and hard. As a symbolic gesture, meant to connect with the Earth mother, this grounded her in reality and established the magical connection she needed to conjure the energies she would need.
Earth of course didn’t exist here, in space, on this vehicle made of steel, in a literal sense, but that wasn’t necessary. Earth was under her feet. The ship was literally made of Earth, of substances from her home planet.
Deirdre put down the runes, one by one, in the correct order from left to right: Coll, then Uilleand, finally Ailm.
She stood up again, straightened her back and raised her chin, her eyes still closed. Again, she turned her focus inwards. Her newly formed spiritual body grew roots from her feet into the ground. They burrowed into the “soil” and sucked magic energy in. Branches sprouted from her shoulders, her head, and grew bigger and stronger. Leaves formed, took shape in this reality, catching rays of “sunlight” and filled her with life. Sap was flowing through her veins, air caressing her leaves. None of this was real. It was a stylised version of reality, maintained through concentration and her natural affinity for magic.
Deirdre expanded, spread out and merged with the grove.
Something moved below her feet, but she was deeply rooted and didn’t care. The piece of pine tree in her hands vibrated softly, as if alive. And it was.
The energy she sucked in from the metal floor went up her trunk, through the branches that were her hands into the pine wood, and filled it.
She would evoke Gwyar now. The colour blue filled her mind. Not the azure of the sky, but the dark blue of the ocean.
Gwyar stood for change, for motion. Motion, she repeated in her mind as a mantra, again and again, while she gave up control of the energy and let it flow freely through the piece of wood in her branches. Her eyes were closed, but she could feel the gate to the Otherworld all around her, encompassing her and the entire ship, embracing them and sucking them in, the same way she had sucked in the power from the Earth.
The image in her mind changed. No longer was she focused on the ocean, and the blue faded away.
She recalled the sense of space and time, the feeling she had experienced when she was calling up the data of the destination on her navigation console. Again, she saw the camera moving through space, rushing into the system called Gliese 667. Two big suns at the centre, caught in a dance, and their smaller, reddish brother orbiting in a wide circle around them. Eight rocks orbiting this red dwarf. The memory of the picture the navigation system had shown her was flawless.
Deirdre backed off a little, gaining more distance to the sun, fine-tuning her image until she was satisfied.
Again the sensation of movement under her feet, the ground vibrating and the gate manifesting around her.
This time, they moved in the opposite direction, out of the Otherworld, back into their own plane of existence. But not at the same position in space any more. Deirdre led the ship over the border between the two worlds at the exact location she held in her mind. The two sibling suns danced in the distance, the younger brother filling her vision, his eight planets tumbling around him, each at a different speed and distance.
She felt the gate closing behind her.
Her leaves shivered in the wind, and her roots stretched out, deep into the Earth. Then, nothing.
>
Silence. As if time stood still, or as if she had left the Einstein continuum. The opposite was the case; they had just returned there. Deirdre would hold her concentration just a little longer, even though the jump was completed.
An ugly sound broke through her focus and filled her entire existence. Metal on metal, screeching, screaming. An explosion in the distance, then another. Screams, then voices all around her.
She didn’t understand a word. Everything happened at once. Everything was way too fast for her to grasp, as long as she was a tree. She had to transform back, or rather, end the ritual.
One more time, she focused as hard as she could and ended the tree meditation.
Leaves, branches, roots disappeared, sap turned back into blood. Deirdre opened her eyes and breathed in and in and in – and out, slowly. The sound of her lungs exhaling pulled her back into reality.
She looked around. Red light filled the bridge, hectic people shouting status messages.
“Hull breach in section one.”
“Hull breach in the engineering section.”
“Reactor B, emergency shutdown.”
“Atmospheric loss, midsection of Deck One.”
What the hell had just happened?
***
The ship rumbled, rocked, and a sudden jerk threw her across the bridge like a doll. Only luck kept her from harm, when the Tuatha De Danann made a leap and it slammed her into the empty captain’s seat. She clawed it, pulled herself in and engaged the seatbelt immediately, just when the ship got thrown around again.
The screaming metal, popping plastic and moans of pain from her crew mates tormented her, while the smell of molten plastics drove tears in her eyes and triggered an explosive cough, resulting in a gag reflex that distracted her for a moment.
Something crashed into her seat.
She heard the dry pop of breaking bones, and a scream.
Again a jerk, and whoever it had been was gone, thrown somewhere else.
The lights flickered, then the bridge went black. The subtle humming of the engines stopped and made her realize that she had been hearing it since she had entered the ship, without ever noticing the sound. Its sudden absence was jarring.
The Tuatha De Danann must have rammed something in open space at the fringes of Gliese 667. The odds of that happening were lower than winning the lottery.
Whatever they had collided with seemed to be gone now, maybe behind the ship. The sounds of destruction stopped, leaving only the ongoing moans. The emergency systems had dealt with fires swiftly, and there were no more explosions. They were drifting through space now, with the drives off. The emergency reactors activated and restored the light. Rumbling in the distance, the ship changing direction - was that the sound of the thrusters? Not that it mattered right now, anyway.
She looked around the now brightly lit bridge. Several people lay on the ground, a few of them obviously hurt, but not all of them.
Brilann stood where he had been during her ritual, behind the captain’s seat. How had he not been thrown around? He was tall and looked in good shape, but he was also an old man. She had not noticed him clinging to the seat from behind either.
The captain came to his feet and shouted orders before he even stood.
Fionnlagh hadn’t been affected by this at all. He was still hanging in the air in silence, looking around, while speaking - probably to the ship’s communication system.
“…the injured stable! Check the atmospheric status!”
Thornhill’s voice came through to her, and with it, all the other voices, as if she had just pulled out earplugs. Deirdre looked down at her body. No injury. She had been damn lucky. How had this happened, though?
7
Where no man has gone before
Deirdre looked around. All officers who had not yet been here when the incident occurred, had gathered on the bridge of the Tuatha De Danann, or what was left of it. The midsection of the ship was heavily damaged, with walls destroyed and rooms being exposed to open space, which included the briefing room, so their options for conferences like this were very limited.
Deirdre stood next to Brilann and, looking around the bridge, was waiting for Captain Thornhill to open the meeting.
The captain frowned. He had recovered quickly after the incident and taken initiative immediately. This didn’t surprise her, he had made a very determined impression the first time they met, when she came on board.
“So we rammed an asteroid. Thankfully, not heads on. It could have been significantly worse. However, we grazed it, and it sliced us open like a can.”
Disconcerting news. Hitting anything in an asteroid field was almost impossible. The distance between rocks, and what other matter there might be around, was astronomical. Deirdre shook her head. Had it been her fault? She was the one who had jumped them into the system. Of course, she had seen no asteroids in her navigation console’s hologram, Earth’s telescopes just didn’t have that kind of range, but still.
“We lost three of our four reactors, our primary drives are damaged beyond repair, most of the laboratories are unusable, complete loss of atmosphere on most stations of the inner deck.”
The captain looked around. It was clear he was not happy with this, but it was what it was.
“The outer deck is intact, no damage to the ring. We should be able to survive quite a while like this, but we’re a lame duck.”
The captain cracked his knuckles, his jaw muscles worked.
“So, what’s the plan?” Brilann’s voice was low.
“Lieutenant Fionnlagh, what can you tell us about our position in the system?”
The Faerie looked up, nodded, then stared into the distance. His fingers moved, as if typing on a virtual keyboard which was probably the case. He nodded again.
“We are at the fringe of the system. The landing point was exactly as planned. Our distance to the outermost planet is close enough for us to get into an orbit if need be, but I doubt we will be able to move the ship much further into the system, with only the secondary drive and the directional thrusters remaining.”
Thornhill nodded again. He furrowed his eyebrows, but stayed silent for a moment.
“We lost part of the science crew,” a tall man in a lab coat said in a hoarse voice.
Thornhill looked at the scientist, gesturing for him to continue. The man took the hint.
“None of the laboratories survived without damage. The walls are ripped open. All of the interior was destroyed, most of the equipment floating in space. A physicist, a geologist, and one mathematician are missing. If I had to guess, I would expect to find their bodies outside the ship, somewhere in the belt.” He clenched his hands to fists, the knuckles protruding. He shoved them in his pockets.
“Thank you, Mister Adams.”
The captain nodded again. It seemed as if he had expected this kind of bad news. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it.
“Mr Schultz, can we perform repairs, and if so, to what degree?”
The middle-aged chief engineer stood next to Fionnlagh. He looked as if he didn’t even breathe, completely static. His face showed distress, but his voice was devoid of emotion. Deirdre felt a fiery ball in her stomach.They all were suffering from shock.
“It is certainly possible to install auto factories and build an emergency space dock to repair the ship. If we can find everything we need in the system. Our drones are fully functional.”
Thornhill turned to Fionnlagh again, with an unspoken question in his eyes.
“The second planet of the system is a gas dwarf. It has several of the resources we will need. Sending drones for the harvest should be possible. However, the distance means our harvesters will take several days both ways. As for the asteroids in this belt, we are lucky. Most of them are metal rich. In fact, the very rock we collided with would do as a temporary base, it’s large and contains mostly iron. There is an inner belt, too, between planets two and three, probably the remnants of a moon. However, most o
f the rock there is worthless for us. Planet Gliese 667 Cd has a ring, but those rocks are mainly ice, very little we can use to set up a repair dock.”
The captain looked at Schultz again.
“I will prepare everything as fast as possible, but this will take time. Weeks at least,” the engineer said.
“Please work with Lieutenant Fionnlagh and locate the resources you need.”
He combed his hair with his fingers, stared at his slightly trembling hand, then put it down.
“Now, what do we know about the planets in the habitable zone?”
The Faerie stared into the distance again, floating in the air, without moving his wings. A perfect statue, ignoring the laws of physics.
“The data we got from this distance does not say if it’s feasible to colonise any of them. All three planets in the goldilocks zone have an atmosphere. The outermost is certainly too cold for humans to settle, at least on the surface. It might be possible to support stations on it, though, and it seems to comprise mostly liquid water under a thick layer of ice. It has only a tiny landmass and large ice shelves at the poles are covering land, like the Antarctica on Earth. The second planet looks more promising, however, it is tidally locked. The atmosphere is thick enough to protect the planet from the worst heat on the daylight side, spreading it around nicely, and the habitable zone around the terminator seems promising enough. It might be worth sending an expedition to find out if we can use it. The innermost of the planets, Cc, is the most inviting among the three. It rotates slowly around its axis, the atmosphere is thick and the composition seems breathable, although… its gravity might be on the high side.”