A Sword Into Darkness
Page 25
What could possibly be of that much value to an alien race? What do we have that they cannot get from anywhere closer than twenty damned light-years? What makes us special? What about our transmissions and broadcasts attracted them to us in the first place?
And why come here so slowly? Kris poised that question the other day, and it doesn’t seem like a logical query at first, but she does have a point. Think about it.
They’re only accelerating at a hundredth of a gravity, well below what we primitives can do with technology we developed from watching them. It has to be because of all those different ships they’re bringing and that overly massive drive “star” of theirs. Why bother bringing so much mass with them that it takes eighty freaking years to make the journey? Does the size of their convoy have anything to do with why they’re coming here? Why are all the vessels of their convoy so different from one another?
I just can’t wrap my monkey brain around our lizard overlords’ intentions and it’s pissing me off.
I’m sorry, Lydia. I didn’t mean to lay so many angst-driven questions on you. It’s just that we’re nearing turnaround, and we’re so far from home, that the loss of PROMISE II makes me worried all over again. Forget it. We’ll figure it all out when we get there.
Switching tracks, I saw that they laid down our next three destroyer hulls. Outstanding! But what about the allied technology transfers? We’re going to need a lot more than three other destroyers to stop these guys should it come to a battle. When are the other NATO countries going to be starting their own hulls? What about the other defense systems?
That’s my bandwidth limit for today. Hope this finds you and yours well. Take care, Boss.
V/R,
NATHANIEL KELLEY
CDR USAN
XXX EOM XXX
SAT TRANSCRIPTION QUEUE: XXX SUPPRESSED XXX
DTG RECEIPT: 20 2307Z FEB 2046
DTG TRANSMITTAL: 03 0746Z DEC 2045
TIME-DISTANCE LAG: 079:15:21:18.6 D:H:M:S
FROM: Kristene Muñoz, LT, USAN
[MUNOZ.KRISTENE@SOL.WINDWARD.NET$USAN.MIL;
CHENG@SOL.WINDWARD.NET$USAN.MIL]
TO: Leo Buchanan, Associate Researcher, Sandia National Laboratory
[LEO.BUCHANAN@SANDIA.GOV$ALBQ.NM.GOV]
SUBJ: Suck eggs, Gravity-Boy!
MSG: Oh, hey there, Leo.
Yeah, I just wanted to drop you a line, let you know where my stupid little experiment’s taken me. Well, we just did a turnaround on our least-time transit, constant acceleration brachistocrone trajectory. Seems we got all the way up to 70.6% the speed of light on our little journey, and we gotta slow down to say hi to the space aliens that surely don’t exist.
Yep, I’m about a quarter of a light-year away from you, so you won’t get this message for quite some time, but I hope that when you get it, I’ll still be able to hear you cussing a blue-streak all the way out here. Ooooooo, feel the burn, lab-mate! Work yourself up into a good, righteously indignant lather.
Hey, how’s your gravity wave propulsion experiment going, by the way? That badly? Really? Awwww. And you looked so very promising and full of yourself back in our university days.
Have fun scratching on chalkboards, Leo, I gots me a date with destiny!
Toodles,
Kris Muñoz
XXX EOM XXX
SAT TRANSCRIPTION QUEUE: XXX SUPPRESSED XXX
DTG RECEIPT: 28 0616Z JAN 2047
DTG TRANSMITTAL: 14 1822Z JUL 2046
TIME-DISTANCE LAG: 197:11:54:10.4 D:H:M:S
FROM: David Edwards, MCPO, USAN
[EDWARDS.DAVID@SOL.WINDWARD.NET$USAN.MIL;
COB@SOL.WINDWARD.NET$USAN.MIL]
TO: Collette Markey
[BUNNIETOES4CM@ALLITEK.COM$SDGO.CA.GOV]
SUBJ: A Final, Dismal First for the LIBERTY Crew
MSG: Hey, Darlin’.
Today is not a good day. Things have been tough for a while now. This trip has been long, too long. People are getting on each other’s last nerves.
The food, most of which has been “processed” on board, tastes pretty much like the recycled shit it is. All the movies have been watched, all the variations of relationships have been tried (and don’t worry, I’ve been a good boy, as have most of the other married folks, with a few notable exceptions), and the fact that we are both at our furthest point from Earth and about one month out from rendezvous … well, the pressure is pretty intense.
Too intense for one.
I don’t know if you remember Diane Rutherford or not. You probably know her better from her official crew biography than you do from personal experience, but I know you met her at least once—maybe at that last Windward Christmas party.
She was pretty but plain. Diane had hair that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be blonde or brown, but she didn’t care. She was smart as a whip—an electrical engineer with a Master’s from Stanford, and she knew reactor control systems like nobody’s business. Of course, with a crew as high-powered as this one, that only translated to her being one of our support personnel: an enlisted Electronics Technician First Class. Diane didn’t mind being designated enlisted like some of our crew did. She didn’t want to be an officer, and she thought being forced into the military before we left was funny as hell. She was from somewhere in the mid-west, Kansas City I think, and she was divorced with no kids, but she was really close to her dad.
I’m talking about her in past tense because she’s dead. When we reached our furthest point from Earth, at rest relative to the solar system, more than half a light-year away from home, she purposefully stuck her hands into a reactor power main bus box and electrocuted herself. We know it was on purpose because she left a note.
Diane had been depressed for months. She’d gotten more and more pessimistic about the mission’s chances, especially when we missed the second probe’s telemetry. She worried about dying out here, with her dad never knowing for certain what happened to her. She was just so damn homesick.
And she wondered if her soul would be able to find its way to heaven so far away from Earth.
We all talked to her, tried to cheer her up, but the problem is, when you’ve been around the same thirty people for so long, your patience for everybody’s annoying little quirks wears pretty thin. Folks just began rolling their eyes when she would start to lose it. I even snapped at her, told her to stop freaking out and get refocused on the mission.
I know, babe. I don’t really blame myself for her committing suicide, but damn it all, I could’ve been more supportive. I’m the COB. It’s my job to know the crew’s minds so I can keep everything running smooth. I’m supposed to listen to ‘em, especially when they’re having problems. Of course, I’m supposed to kick ‘em in the ass when they need it too. Shit.
So, we’ve had our first death. In accordance to her wishes, as specified in her suicide note, we committed her body to space. Yeah, I can guess what you’re thinking—it doesn’t seem too damn consistent with the particular worries she was having over her soul and all, but I don’t think rationality was her strong suit in those last few days. It may not make sense to any of us, but it’s apparently what she’d been waiting for weeks for.
Nathan said a few words, we said a prayer, and we all jumped back into work. Things are quieter now, more polite, more introspective, I guess. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, though.
Diane’s death is like a slap in the face. It woke us up, but it also put us on the defensive. Folks aren’t talking to each other like they should be. This is when we need to be finalizing things, polishing off our diplomatic and tactical plans. It’s almost game-time and we should be looking for ways to come together, not drift further apart. On top of everything, her death was the last thing we needed.
Everybody is taking it hard. Nathan is beating himself up. Kris too. The XO isn’t beating himself up—he’s pissed at her instead, but I’m not sure that’s in any way a better thing.
I’ll give ‘em all another day to play the self
-blame game (myself included) and then I’ll commence to kicking everybody’s ass. We have got to get our heads straight—Nathan most of all. These Deltans aren’t going to give a shit if we’re tired of each other, or depressed, or worried, or whatever. They know what they’re about, they have their own agenda, and they’re going to follow it, whether we’re ready or not. We have to be ready.
That’s it, babe. I realize that by the time you get this note, we’ll have already made first contact, so it’ll all be over, one way or another, but pray for me anyway. We’re going to need all the help you and the man upstairs can provide, belated or not.
I love you.
— Dave
XXX EOM XXX
14: “FIRST CONTACT”
August 16, 2046; USS Sword of Liberty (DA-1), 0.48 light-years from Earth, 2.0 light-seconds (600,000 km) from alien formation; Mission Day 529
Alone in the vast darkness, a sword of light slashed across the void. So far from the life-giving radiance and warmth of Sol, the only star mankind had ever known as more than an abstract point on the matte black canvas of the sky, there was no real illumination other than what the brilliantly lit vessel produced on its own. The blade of this rapier-like ship was crafted of light itself, a long contrail of focused energy, so strong and so fiery that its very emission was enough to drive the ship through the night. The sword’s hilt, the source of that shining blade, was a tiny thing lost in the vastness, a warm, dully glowing construct of metal, carbon, and unflinching will.
Abruptly, the blade of light vanished, shutting off its driving radiance after seventeen months of near-continuous operation. The USS Sword of Liberty coasted through space, lit only by the dull reddish glow of the radiator panels running down the middle third of her length. Her forward third—a maul-like hexagonal wedge of dark gray crystalline armor, antennas, radar panels, weapon emplacements, and missile hatches—flashed with lances of blue-white light, smaller, but no less brilliant than the illumination produced by her main engine.
These pulses of radiant thrust slewed the ship around and then arrested her traverse, such that she was now pointed bow-on toward the only other artifact in their small bubble of space—a bright spark of violet with a forward leading contrail of blue brilliance all its own. This, the quarry that had driven the crew to build their amazing little ship, was a constrained sphere of plasma, a star-in-miniature that the visitors somehow used as their drive. And circling about this angry, roiling ball of gas were four constructs, invisible to the naked eye from this distance—the enigmatic alien ships of the Deltans themselves.
The Sword of Liberty was not limited to the naked eye, though. Telescopic cameras dotted her hull and combined their data in phase, effectively giving the destroyer a virtual lens as large as the ship herself. The ship channeled the resulting image to the very interested parties in her Bridge Control Room, buried at the center of the forward mission hull.
And within that Bridge, Commander Nathan Kelley, Captain and Commanding Officer of their far flung expedition, looked at the magnified image with an intensity that had built itself steadily over mile upon impossible mile of their journey, until it seemed strong enough to blast through the screen and through the hull, strong enough to reach out to the Deltans and reveal their mysteries all by itself.
Alas, no matter how hard he looked, he was only human, and no such capability existed. Nathan shook his head, and frowned. So close and yet … .
He looked around the starkly silent bridge at his officers and crew. All of them were suited up in slender, form-fitting vacuum suits, and each one watched the steadily growing image of the Deltan formation as intently as he had been. All of them, that is, but Kris, who appeared less concerned over their journey’s resolution than she was over the state of the man leading it. She looked back at him with compassion, worry, and love shining from her eyes as brightly as the thrust from her engines.
He reached out to her and grasped her vacuum-suited hand with his own, drawing her floating figure close. As her face came up to his, he ran his other gloved hand through her short, silver-white hair and locked her into a long, emphatic kiss. It was a simple thing, a familiar intimacy, but this time, with all that lay behind them and all that still remained, this time it was special.
As he kissed her, and as she returned it with equal fervor and insistence, all the months of impatience, dread, petty annoyances, and fatigue began to fall away. Now, on the doorstep to discovery, the voyage’s slow-building weariness—a weariness which had even begun to strain the two of them—seemed to fade. It had dragged all of them down for week after endless week, but now it passed, leaving them both with a renewed sense of wonder and purpose.
Kris pulled back slowly, languidly, and favored him with a smile that suffused her whole face, her whole being. “Better, mon Capitan?”
“Oh yes, CHENG,” he answered, with a grin all his own, the first he had genuinely felt in some time. He let her go reluctantly. As she drifted off, he found that the rest of the bridge crew had also turned away from the frustratingly close enigma of the Deltans and were looking directly at the two of them, most with half smiles on their lips.
Dave Edwards, strapped into the Chief of the Boat’s seat to his left, patted Nathan’s arm and said, gently, “You know, Skipper, if you two are having a moment, we can put this whole first contact bullshit on hold. After a year and a half of waiting, I’m sure the crew won’t begrudge you a quickie with your main squeeze.”
Nathan turned to him with an expression gone from serene to baleful. “COB … .” he said menacingly.
To his right, Christopher Wright spoke up, his tone as professional and serious as ever. “Captain, we’re at two light-seconds from the objective, zero thrust, and bow on. Estimate a 015 by minus 20 relative target angle to the formation and opening. No reaction by the aliens, sir. Ready for your orders, Captain.”
“Thank you, XO.” Nathan turned back to the main panoramic screen forward of them. He touched the trackball control mounted to his armrest and scrolled around the image, highlighting and magnifying target tracks as he continued to speak. “All right, this is it. We are currently about ten times further out than the Promises were when they were programmed to initiate comms. We know that the first probe was safe up to this point, because she wasn’t taken out until she was almost on top of them. As for Promise II, it’s a wash. We don’t know if she either never made it this close, or if she made it closer but got smashed before she could reconfigure herself for communication. Either way, we haven’t been schwacked yet, so this is probably a safe range for the moment. This is our last chance to alter plans if we need to. After this, we’re committed.”
Nathan had highlighted and set off into inset windows of their own each of the visible ships that made up the Deltan convoy: the Control Ship, the Polyp, and the Cathedral. The Junkyard, in its quasi-Lagrange position on the far side of the Control Ship, was occluded by the drive-star, but the slow orbit of each of the vessels around the axis of thrust would soon bring it into view and obscure the Polyp in turn.
Nathan looked at the crew seated and floating around him. Along with Dave Edwards and Christopher Wright representing his command staff, and Kris here for Engineering, he also had Mike Simmons from Operations Department and Ivy Cho from Weapons Department, his other department heads. Also seated were four “enlisted” watchstanders at their Bridge stations for Helm/Maneuvering, Ops/Communications, Weps/Sensors, and Aux Engineering, but they kept their eyes on their duties and did not interject themselves into his powwow with the senior officers.
The Executive Officer held up a hand. “I don’t see any gains made in changing things at this point. I just want to reiterate that we have only one chance at doing this peacefully. Once we shoot or shoot back, we’ll have set the course for the whole planet, so I want to again urge caution and patience. What happened to the probes might have been either hostile or inexplicably benign. We cannot be sure how an alien intelligence would view our physical visitatio
ns to them or their reactions to that visitation until we understand their culture. Even if the Deltans take action that could be construed as hostile, I’d prefer to hold off counterfire until it becomes our last possible option. Maneuver defensively, continue attempts at communication, and hope that we can get through to them before they leave us with no other choice.”