by Rupert Segar
Later Captain Bull would tell the investigating officers how he jostled with a catalogue of dream images as he regained consciousness. He had been reliving some of the more violent moments of his military career. One moment, he had been back on tour as a ground trooper on Solar Prime, firing his stun gun at men, women and children who were demonstrating over Imperial taxation. There was a flash image of children dead in the plaza, lying beside their unconscious and twitching parents. He switched to the Pagan-Christian churches of Axia alight with flames higher than their steeples; steeple, yes that was the word, “steeples.” Captain Bull had always been interested in vernacular architecture. He could hear the chanting of the druid priests barred inside until their voices were drowned out by the roar of the flames and the screams of the congregation. The picture had changed again. He saw a civilian cruiser trying to escape the degenerate world of Flora. He gave the mental command “fire” and, seconds later, the passenger ship exploded in a sphere of flame and debris. There was no remorse. Captain Bull was a man of little imagination. He was a patriot following the orders of his superiors and interests of Empire. He was fully awake.
Captain Bull recalled feeling something shuffle inside his head. It was as if someone had flicked a switch and the light went out. He was blind, he could not see the sensor-web, and there was nothing, no images, no information.
In panic, Captain Bull had opened his eyes to see the control console transform itself. On the vid-screen the hieroglyphs and squiggles turned into numbers, letters and words all in Standard Terran, the language used by pilots throughout the Empire and beyond. The controls, buttons and light switches changed colour. The vid-screen itself got wider and small but readable diagrammatic maps appeared. On one, he could see his departure point clearly marked high above the ecliptic plane of the solar system. A pulsing line appeared to show his journey, not away from the system but directly back towards Terra Nova. They had travelled half the distance towards the planet before jumping back into normal space.
Colonel Garth remembered the terrified pilot as he tried to justify not following the flight plan agreed with his commanding officer, Admiral Haden. Captain Bull’s story that he had blacked out until the ship had jumped back into normal space was not believed by the Admiral who shared most of humanity’s fear of machine intelligence.
“You’re telling us the ship itself changed course?” stormed Admiral Haden. “Is it not more likely that you made errors in setting the course yourself rather than blaming it on some machine?”
Colonel Garth had stopped the interview before it became a court martial and the distraught captain was punished further. Unlike the Admiral, Colonel Garth had read all the reports. The engineers’ sensor recordings from the cluster attached to the pilot’s chair had shown that Captain Bull had, indeed, been unconscious for the entire half hour hyper flight trip. The recordings also showed a huge amount of activity across the sensor web connection during the captain’s brief period of unconsciousness, Captain Bull had been unable to connect the ship again or any spaceship sensorium. The technicians said his widgets or neural pathways had been changed and they had no idea how to correct the damage. Captain Bull was out of a job.
Colonel Garth had dismissed the admiral. Then sitting close to the captain he asked him to tell him everything he had felt or seen when connected to the craft. Garth reassured the Captain that everything would be “just between you, me and the Emperor.”
The story came tumbling out. All of Captain Bull’s dreams, visions of the past, and the ominous click of an off button. Colonel Garth was not concerned about the pilot’s fate: he would be punished enough for his shortcomings by the loss of his position.
The Colonel’s main interest had been in what the strange ship had done. The engineers reported the small vessel had reconfigured its control consol. Effectively, the machine was now speaking Terran and had used some sort of plastic flow mechanism to change itself. Garth hoped this was all the just product of some clever programming but his instinct told him there was something else there lurking, like a ghost in the machine.
More concerning was the fact that the vessel had managed to reappear in normal space a mere 5 million miles from Terra Nova. News of this astounding feat was enough to spur one of his spies among the engineers to send him a secret message via one of the stable of postal ships that continually criss-crossed the Empire. The message had found Colonel Garth a day later. He had made the journey to Terra Nova in fifteen hours.
Colonel Garth’s arrival on the flagship Dreadnought put the entire fleet stationed at the Terra Nova system on alert. The Emperor’s enforcer had no need of rank to command, his authority came direct from the throne of the Emperor himself. Those who crossed Colonel Garth did not survive long. He was a man who was used to getting his own way in an instant. This fact made the loss of a potential super weapon along with the escape of a provincial pilot and an unremarkable chief engineer all the more frustrating.
+
On board the tiny fleeing ship, in the dark, in his cabin, Art was also trying to get to sleep. The events of the day and of the preceding week were churning in his mind. Art had been laid up at Proteus Spaceport waiting for the next piloting job when the Vim landed. The huge freighter was the size of a small town. The vessel’s shadow made midday seem like midnight. He and others with space-side passes had gone out to the edge of the apron to watch touchdown but they had all been turned back by a line of troopers. The excluded crowd were convinced, a secret cargo was being delivered to the engineering hanger.
Early the next morning, the Vim took off. Rumours swept the port that a mystery ship was being sent on a test flight. Normal life resumed and Art faced the tedium of waiting for his next commission. Twenty five hours later, the gargantuan freighter returned, security was stepped up, and Art got the call.
“Captain King,” a voice sneered and the mini-screen on his communicator showed the face of an elderly adjutant. “It appears you’re the only available qualified pilot at Proteus and, as such, I have to inform you that you are being recommissioned with the temporary rank of merchant fleet captain. You will report to engineering hanger number 1. Immediately! By order of Colonel Garth.”
An hour later, after filling in forms in triplicate and being escorted through a maze of hastily erected temporary corridors leading to a curtained ramp, Art emerged into a cramped strange looking cabin. A solitary chair was festooned with equipment. Engineers and technicians trailing wires and holding meters seemed to be wedged into every corner of tiny space. Two of the scientists had to leave the cabin to enable Art to get in.
Art was aware of the tension among the engineers and technicians as they prepared him for neural connection. The broad pilot’s seat was not uncomfortable, just awkward. Even for Art, who was taller than most, the control console was a few centimetres too far away. He outstretched his arms and grabbed the two joysticks. A technician eased his head backwards until he made contact with the headrest. He felt a tingle in the back of his skull as his widgets turned on, then he was overwhelmed by light and noise and he passed out.
Art could tell he was dreaming but it was one of those dreams where he seemed to have no control over what happened. There was a kaleidoscope of images from childhood and from his life in the Imperial Navy. They all stopped whirling round and he found himself looking out through the ship’s sensor web at the spaceport and the surrounding area. He could hear a babble of technicians’ voices.
“He’s coming round, Chief.”
“Still connected..”
“ … data rate down to normal.”
Eyes still closed, Art looked beyond the edge of the sensorium. The web responded by changing scale. Briefly but with enormous clarity he saw all the vessels in orbit about Terra Nova. The scale changed again and there was a representation of the sun, the planets and the asteroid belts. He glanced at a symbol on the outer belt and was given a rolling list of information about traffic and ships movements over the past few days. The
scale switched again and he saw other neighbouring stellar systems. Another switch and the whole section of the spiral arm came into a clear crisp view.
“Like what you see, pilot?” whispered a voice in his head.
He opened his eyes and met the gaze of Chief Engineer Yelena Kolowski. The young blonde officer was leaning over him with her face close to his.
“I do indeed,” said the pilot.
“What?” said the engineer somewhat puzzled.
Art could sense the relief in the room. Everyone was looking at him and they seemed both surprised and pleased. He closed his eyes once more. He looked at the schemata that depicted the ship itself. The meaning of each symbol was obvious or at least he felt so. There were two containers both nearly empty: one was the flux capacitors, the other the energy store.
“We need more energy,” said a quiet voice almost pleading.
Art’s recollection of his initial connection with the ship was interrupted by the sound of the door to his cabin being opened. As he lay on his bunk, light from the main cabin flooded in and there, in silhouette, stood Chief Engineer, Yelena Kolowski, wearing just a t-shirt.
“Do you want some company?” she asked softly.
Chapter 6: The Age of Exploration
The invention of an antidote to the Great Plague heralded the second great expansion. Most of the inhabited planets of the galaxy suffered a millennium of isolation before salvation arrived. The cure spread far more slowly than the disease. The treatment and the alleviation of the isolation was largely dependent on the dedication of the Cult of Explorers.
On Fair Isles, a world almost completely covered in water in the Orion Belt, the day the explorers arrived began as normal for Nigeal and his younger sister Thistle, who lived on the main island of Crete. Their parents were away with the fishing fleet, out on the Pacifica Sea. The young teenagers were playing handball on the beach in front of their home when they heard the sound of rumbling thunder in the clear blue sky. Looking eastward, they saw what looked like an aircraft approaching the island. Only as the large vessel passed overhead, did they realise it was something new, something different. It was a spaceship, the first to visit the planet in more than one thousand years.
The vessel, Explorer Spirit, made a wide 180 degree turn, slowing and descending until it landed in the waters just outside of the village harbour. A splash of water 20 metres high was replaced by plumes of steam and water vapour that obscured the floating vessel as it approached the island’s main pier.
The 50 metre long Explorer Spirit moored in the deep water harbour by the town centre. A throng of islanders headed by a group of elders, all carrying garlands of flowers, were crowded onto the pier. Nigeal and Thistle were near the front, a ramp extended from the floating vessel. There was a gasp from the crowd as a uniformed, narrow shouldered young woman emerged from the airlock. She walked calmly with her hands held palm upwards in front of her.
“We bring you Good News: peace, knowledge and a new age,” she said in a broad accent that was still recognisably Terran. The Age of Exploration had reached the Fair Isles.
Stepping onto the pier, the interstellar explorer, Suxie Wong, reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of 3cm cubes. She gave some to the waiting Elders then knelt down and handed one each to Nigeal and Thistle. She winked at the children and stood back up to face the crowd.
“These cubes contain the libraries of a thousand worlds, one for each year of the millennium of isolation,” said Suxie holding up one of the cubes. “People of Fair Isle, this is but a little gift and it is all we can give you. However, we bring you Good News. The door to the galaxy has been re-opened and you are invited to re-join the greater galactic community.”
Suxie and her five crewmates stayed on the Fair Isles for a month. They had landed on the most populated island in the archipelago. The scattered islands were the only land masses on the water covered world. Each of the explorers was made a guest by one of the elders but Suxie chose to stay with Nigeal and Thistle. The children’s parents were both surprised and delighted when they returned from their trawling trip three days after the explorers’ arrival.
Suxie told the children about her home world, Willow. Fifteen year old Nigeal found it hard to imagine a planet with only two small seas. The idea of three billion people was hard for thirteen year old Thistle to accept. She worried how they could find enough fish to feed everyone. The population of Fair Isles was less than 100 thousand. Willow was one of the first hundred worlds to take part in the second great expansion. Suxie told the children how explorers from a neighbouring stellar system had brought Willow the Good News.
“Did you see them yourself,” interjected Thistle. “Were they little green men?”
“No, not ‘little green men,’” said Suxie, laughing at the little islander’s xenophobic fear of outsiders. “No, and I didn’t see them. But my great, great grandmother was there. She was a little girl like you, Thistle, when the explorers landed in the waters of Oceania and came ashore at her village.”
Susie explained how the advent of a new age of travel between the stars had galvanised her world. The knowledge of how to build computers immune to the plague led to a long period of space ship building. Willow soon dominated the short list of explorer worlds spreading the Good News. Suxie’s great, great grandmother had left on one of the first ships, returning home only periodically over the next one hundred and ten years.
“I was just your age, Thistle, when she came back for the last time,” said Suxie with a smile. “The stories she had to tell of great adventures on foreign worlds were magical. They inspired me to become an explorer in turn.”
“Can I be an explorer too?” asked Thistle.
“Maybe,” said Suxie smiling. “It would depend on your elders.”
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The first task for the crew was to set up their flux charger. The portable unit was dragged out of the cargo hold and dumped into the harbour on a length of twisted cable. The water cooled generator would take four weeks to charge the vessel’s flux capacitors. Hyper flight travel was a paradox: while it could only take place across space time which was relatively flat; flux could only be generated in a steep gravity well, like that produced by a planet.
Suxie took the children on board the Explorer Spirit and showed them the engine hold where the flux capacitors were being trickle charged. The meters all showed red, the indicators slowly creeping upwards.
“We can only hold enough flux for about ten light years travel,” said Suxie “it takes about one of your months to charge up.”
“How far from home are you?” asked Thistle.
“Oh, about one hundred and eighty light years as light flies. Maybe half as far again as the ship jumps.”
“Does that mean you will never get back?” asked Nigeal.
“Yes, we can, eventually, jump by jump, planet to planet,” said Suxie ruffling the boy’s hair. “But our mission is to spread the Good News and we are still pushing outwards to worlds locked in by the Great Plague, worlds like yours. I’ll get home one day.”
Suxie noticed that both children looked a little sad. “Did you know, we’re only forty thousand light years from ancient Earth?” said the passionate explorer. “Come and look at the star charts and we will see if we can find the old lady.”
+
At the end of the month, the other crew members dismantled and stowed the fliers they had used visit other islands on the archipelago. They had taken cubes and cube readers to all the main inhabited areas. The legacy of the explorers was knowledge. It was up to the cultures they visited how they used it.
Suxie was pleased with the enthusiastic response they had received from islanders all over the archipelago. The flowers and parades that marked their arrival were typical of many of the worlds she had visited. More impressive was the analysis from her chief economist that the planet’s finances were sound and sufficient to start a spacefaring programme. Indeed the Elders were already talking of building an e
xplorer ship. Maybe, one day, Suxie would return to the Fair Isles to find Nigeal or Thistle gone to spread the Good News themselves. She devoutly hoped so.
Chapter 7: Fugitives
Yelena woke feeling warm and snug. She could hear Art breathing, his arm was over her waist and he was nestled behind her naked body. For a moment or two Yelena felt relaxed, even happy. Then the traumatic memories flooded back.
She lay thinking in the gloom of the cabin. Her life, her career, her friendships and her home had been ripped away. Any certainties had gone. Yelena was now a fugitive from a vast Empire which had already signed her death warrant.
Yelena’s universe had shrunk to the size of a ridiculously small spaceship, which she was sharing with a civilian pilot. Well, perhaps, there was one good thing, she thought as she remembered Art’s tender love making which had climaxed with a sense of urgency engulfing them both. They made love twice. The second time took much longer but ended again with her reaching a powerful orgasm. Now her new lover was spent and snoring behind her. She disentangled herself from Art’s embrace and slid out of bed.
After a shower, Yelena sat at the round table in the main cabin cradling a capsule of coffee in her hands. They were still living off the small stockpile of rations that had been put on board for Art’s test flight to Jockos, a neighbouring star system. The smell of burnt fig and cinnamon was, she had been told in the navy quartermaster, the authentic aroma of old Earth coffee. She cradled the warm self-heating capsule and sipped the sweet liquid.
Art emerged fully dressed from his cabin and gave her a shy smile. He pulled the tab on a capsule of Old English breakfast tea and placed the cup on the table. He sat opposite to her.
“Are you alright?” she asked softly.
“Do you mean about the sex or the computer?” he retorted.