James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 01

by Meridian

  She brushed her hair back and stared disinterestedly through the canopy. “So, is this what you guys in the Flight Groups do in hyperspace? Play games?”

  Something inside him smiled sheepishly and slunk off somewhere else. “It’s how we maintain our flight skills.” He pulled Prudence up and out of the canyon. “Would you like to take over the controls?”

  “Negative, thank you.”

  “Why not? Surely you’re checked out on the Aves?”

  “Of course I am. I just don’t have an inclination to fly… and I don’t care much for simulations. The real things in the universe are difficult enough to deal with.”

  It finally sank into Driver that Eliza was just not loving this as much as he did. “End simulation,” he said. The holo-projection of Bad Color Scheme World disappeared from the canopy, replaced with the non-simulation of Pegasus’s hangar bay. The sense of motion disappeared. The control gear around his face retracted and vanished. He turned to her. “Is there something else you’d like to do?” Eliza rose. “I better get back to my quarters. I have to brief Executive Tyro Commander Lear on Navigation.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it more.”

  She shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t like simulations Breakfast tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be there,” Matthew said, rising to escort her to the hatch. So far, the renowned Driver charm was not getting him any closer to her.

  Pegasus – Prime Commander Keeler’s Suite

  During the hyperspace run, Keeler made only cursory inspections of the Main Bridge. Most of the crew attributed this to lack of interest. Hardly anyone suspected how much Keeler fretted, or how much time he spent in his quarters or his Command Suite, nervously pacing, mixing drinks, practicing chip shots with his walking stick, mixing more drinks and pacing some more.

  Keeler fretted over what would happen if a glitch caused Pegasus to lose its navigation or insularity fields in hyperspace. If any of the ship were exposed to raw hyperspace, even for a moment, it would collapse from the quantum level upward, leaving a trail of sub-atomic debris as ship and crew evaporated to nothingness.

  Nine days into the hyperspace transit found Keeler anxiously monitoring the capacity utilization readings for the central AI braincore. Thus far, It had been averaging 93.7% with spikes into the 98%

  range. Navigating in hyperspace, tacking the sails to the energy currents, and maintaining a pocket of normal space around the ship were complex tasks demanding considerable braincore resources.

  “More resources than anyone thought,” Queequeg reported. “The design specs called for about 80%

  system use in hyperspace with spikes to 83-85%.”

  “Is that serious enough for me to start and/or stop drinking?” Keeler asked his cat.

  “The models probably underestimated how much capacity was needed to navigate and maintain structural integrity in hyperspace. Also, Pegasus’s artificial intelligence is designed for continuous self-upgrading through the use of heuristic algorithms.”

  “You know, you really haven’t lived until you’ve heard your cat talk about ‘continuously self-upgrading heuristic algorithms.’“

  The cat flicked its tail. Enhanced felines had shown a surprising affinity for technobabble. “We may be able to grow more processing capacity before the next run, but I don’t think it will be necessary. The ship is in a learning cycle. It has never been in hyperspace before and it needs more processing capacity.

  Next time, it will know how to process more efficiently.”

  Lear Family Suites – Pegasus

  Twenty-two days into hyperspace, Goneril Lear was in her family’s suite once again reviewing the archival file on the Meridian colony. This file was a synopsis of fragmentary data recovered from the ruins of the City of Testament after radiation levels subsided .

  MERIDIAN:

  FOURTH PLANET OF EIGHT. SYSTEM DESIGNATION 10 122 PEGASI.

  DISCOVERED AND SURVEYED: SOLAR YEAR 3882. FIRST COLONIZED, SOLAR YEAR 4293.

  GEOPHYSICAL PARAMETERS:

  NOT AVAILABLE. BELIEVED TO BE WITHIN TERRA CLASS PRIMARY

  RANGE.

  SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS:

  NOT AVAILABLE. BELIEVED TO BE WITHIN TERRA CLASS PRIMARY

  RANGE.

  KNOWN HISTORY:

  THE CONTRACT FOR DEVELOPMENT OF THE MERIDIAN COLONY WAS

  WON BY THE PAN-ATLAS OUTWORLD DEVELOPMENT CONSORTIUM.

  THE CONSORTIUM CHOSE A MODEL EMPHASIZING THE CREATION OF A

  SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL BASE AS THE FIRST PRIORITY,

  SUGGESTING AN INTENTION OF LONG-TERM HUMAN HABITATION…

  In stark contrast to my own world, Lear thought. Republic had never really been “settled.” As a marginally inhabitable planet, it might have been a candidate for colonial terra-forming but for the wealth of minerals and chemicals on its surface; in particular, Element 151, a rare substance vital in Colonial Times as a catalyst for creating anti-matter. Instead of towns and farms, Republic was dotted with gigantic Extraction Facilities, Refineries, and Peripheral Support and Inhabitation Complexes. Her family name, Lear, was derived from one of the old Commonwealth Industrial Combines that had set up shop on the surface of Republic, into whose service some ancestor had pledged herself. She continued.

  Last contact:

  TACHYON PULSE MESSAGE RECEIVED AT REPUBLIC, OLD CALENDAR, PERIOD 9, DAY 11, 5856 A.P.R. TEXT FOLLOWS:

  (garble) … outpost of… We are in… (garble)… assimilation (?) … gathered in Point Ewain (believed to be the name of a city)… our lives… (cut off) This has been variously interpreted as an attempt to communicate with other human worlds, a news report, and a distress call. Analysts have been unable to reach a conclusion.

  The date corresponded to within a century of the dawn of the Great Silence. When Republic had been cut off, it had survived on agricultural shipments from Sapphire for about a century, and when those stopped, had to rely on the meager output of its own greenhouses, and those few edible forms of native life, aquatic, protein-rich Tagger Pods especially. Little wonder its society had descended into six centuries of war.

  She read on. Under previous contacts, reports from the tachyon communication network were listed, but Meridian had been a sparsely populated agricultural world, and there was little news. There were two reports of ships arriving with workers from Meridian, most of whom returned to their home planet after their term of service.

  A Modeling Study Report, produced by the Odyssey Project Subdirectorate of Colonial Development Studies, contained several thousand lines of statistical analysis explaining the relationship between population, agriculture, and technology. The conclusion the analysts had reached was not particularly useful:

  MERIDIAN’S POPULATION IS MOST LIKELY TO BE DISPERSED AMONG

  SUCH LOW-DENSITY AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES WITH FEW, IF ANY, EXCEEDING 100,000 IN POPULATION. TECHNOLOGY MAY BE EXPECTED

  TO BE APPROPRIATE

  TO PLANETARY

  NEEDS.

  TOTAL

  ESTIMATED

  POPULATION, 900 MILLIONS TO 1.2 BILLIONS.

  Lear pondered this for quite some time. What could Republic offer a “ widely dispersed agrarian culture? What would such a culture want? Technology? Medicine?

  “Mother?” came a voice. She turned to see her two sons standing in the division between her study and the family area of her quarters.

  She smiled at them and dimmed her reader. “Come in.”

  Marcus, the younger, was ten. He ran first into the room. Trajan, twelve and prematurely blooming into a sullen adolescence, hung back. Her children were strong and beautiful, and she was proud of them.

  Marcus took after Augustus, with his dark curls and creamy skin. Trajan, with his honey-blond hair, green eyes, and full lips reminded Lear of her own father.

  At the time of their conception, Lear had questioned the wisdom of bearing sons. Part of her had wanted a daughter, but she knew that her military career would keep her away from home
too often and that Augustus would be the primary parental figure, so boys were the logical decision. However, she was not too old to bear a daughter. The thought had been much in her mind of late. She put it aside.

  “Are you done working?” Marcus said, putting his arms around her neck.

  “I can study those boring old files later. How are you? How is school?” In the manner of children through the millennia, her boys answered indifferently. “School’s tolerable.”

  “How do you like studying with Sapphireans?”

  “They ask stupid questions,” Marcus said.

  “They do, do they? What kind of ‘stupid questions’?”

  “I don’t know. When we read stories, they want to know if they can change the ending. Stupid questions like that.”

  She looked to her other son. “What about you, Trajan? What do you think of the Sapphireans?”

  “They never teach us any facts,” Trajan groused. “They give us questions and expect us to find the answers. Then, they argue about whose answer is best. It doesn’t make any sense. Why don’t they just teach us what the facts are from the beginning?”

  Lear sighed. She would have to practice Trajan in tact. She pulled her boys toward her. Trajan pulled away, rolling his eyes. “It’s not what makes us different that’s important,” Lear their mother told them.

  “It’s what have in common. We have to live together on this ship and get along.” Or such was the official line of the Odyssey Project Subdirectorate on Moral and Cooperation. Keep saying it, sooner or later it will be true, she had always been taught. “Remember, living here is harder for them than for us. On Sapphire, you can go anywhere you want, and you don’t even need a rebreather pack.”

  “But this ship is so big, and there are hardly any people on it. The Sapphireans should have plenty of room” Marcus said. “The teacher said there were less people on this ship than in one tower of the Jacet Complex in Alexander.”

  Trajan winced upon hearing the name of their home address. Lear knew Trajan had not been happy with life onboard Pegasus. He had not even wanted to come and had even tried to run away the day they were to depart, intending to stay with Goneril’s sister, Cordelia.

  “That is true… and the Sapphireans are different,” Lear said, brushing Marcus’s hair with motherly affection. “These Pathfinder ships had to be altered to accommodate them,. We had to add open spaces and gardens. Sapphireans love to be outside and expose their skin to solar radiation, and so we couldn’t build as many as we would have liked…”

  She caught herself. She had not meant to editorialize to her children. “They have their own ways. But if you ever find anything they do unusually strange, just smile and ask them about it. Be open to them.

  We’re going to see many new worlds on our journey, worlds with people who are even more different.” She rose, “So, who’d like some soy gelatin? I’ll have unflavored.”

  “Chocolate-mint-coffee-and-cream,” Marcus said with gusto. He was a kid who knew what he wanted.

  Lear looked expectantly at Trajan “I’m not hungry,” he said and slunk off to his room.

  “Why is Trajan always so anti-social?” Marcus lamented.

  “Don’t say such terrible things. He just needs to adjust,” Lear told him. “Let’s get that soy.” Keeler’s Quarters

  After twenty-eight days in hyperspace, Keeler chose to initiate Redfire in one of his favorite mentally-challenging past times: playing simultaneous games of what ancients might have recognized as chess, checkers, backgammon, and Yahtzee. “That’s 26 for 4 of a kind, knight threatens bishop, and king me, dammit.”

  Redfire looked from board to board, with a face of utter confusion. Maybe, Keeler reflected, he shouldn’t have initiated Redfire into this exercise while playing for shots of tergiversate – an alcoholic beverage from Sapphire’s Carpentaria continent distilled from fermented tree sap – at the same time.

  Redfire picked up the backgammon dice and began shaking the small oval cup.

  “So, tell me, Tyro Commander, how have you been occupying your time since we entered hyperspace? As there are no tactical situations to resolve, I trust you’ve found other ways to amuse yourself.”

  “I’ve been experimenting with a new art form. I call it, ‘creative historical revisionism.’ I alter the variables of historical events to produce an artistically meaningful outcome.”

  “What kind of historical variables are you talking about?” Keeler jumped two of Redfires pieces.

  “King me. Three shots.”

  Redfire felt his stomach lurch at the thought of more alcohol. The problem with this game was, he realized, that once you began losing, you tended to keep losing. “For example, if the Altus Cthulu volcano had erupted before the Thean siege instead of after, 80% of Sapphire’s population would have been rendered sterile by the White Plague, instead of 20%.”

  “Those events were more than five hundred years apart. How can you possibly hypothesize how one would affect the other?”

  “Isn’t that the appeal of history; how the interaction of tiny variables producing grand events?”

  “Not really,” Keeler took a sip of wine. He had heard the nostrum about “wine and liquor, never sicker,” but had always assumed it didn’t apply to him.

  Redfire rolled the dice, moved three disks, went on to the checkerboard where he jumped one of Keeler’s pieces. “Shot.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Another shot went down. Upon recovering, Keeler relaxed. “You know, the ancestor who founded my line came to Sapphire about the time of the White Plague. Lexington Keeler, Admiral of the Commonwealth.”

  “Is that why he started New Cleveland far out in the wilderness, to avoid the plague?”

  “Neg, he started New Cleveland colony because he wanted to have a good time and didn’t want anyone to bother him. After he chased the last Adversary out of the galaxy, his ship was nearly destroyed. He put himself into stasis to survive, and his ship took 300 years to limp back into civilized space. After the parades were finished, he just wanted to drink, enjoy the pleasures of women, and otherwise be left alone. So, he founded the artist’s colony at New Cleveland, named, no doubt, for one of the magnificent cities of Ancient Earth.”

  The comlink at his desk was flashing. He touched it and was met with the stern visage of Executive Tyro Commander Lear. “Good Evening, Prime Commander. Have you had the opportunity to review the cargo manifest reports?”

  “Za.” It was true. She was only asking if he had had the opportunity, not if he had actually reviewed them; a key distinction.

  “Did you sign the agro-botanical harvest projections?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you read them?”

  “Read what?”

  She glared. “The responsibility for commanding this ship goes far beyond sitting in the command chair and giving orders.”

  Actually, from Keeler’s perspective, command was about sitting in the command chair and giving orders. “Did you review those reports?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Then, I trust your judgment, Keeler out.” He closed the channel, and addressed the boards. “Knight takes pawn, and I’ll take 20 for fives, securing my bonus. Drink!” The cat access hatch slid open, and Queequeg bounded through it like his tail was on fire. “Where have you been for the last three days?” Keeler demanded.

  “No where,” Queequeg answered, halting and recovering his cool instantaneously. He flicked his tail, and settled back to lick his paw.

  “And what were you doing?”

  “Nothing!”

  Redfire cocked his head. “You must be the Commander’s cat.”

  “You must be the guy who makes obvious observations.”

  “I hear you’re quite good accessing secure data networks, like the Tactical Systems.” Queequeg looked at Keeler. “Did you tell him that?”

  “Of course not.” Queequeg developed a sudden interest in licking the fur of one leg.

  “There were paw-pr
ints all over the data-channel, leading right back to your master’s quarters.”

  “It wasn’t me, it was Flight Commander Collins’s marmalade,” Queequeg insisted. “You can’t trust marmalades, sneaky devils, little black spots on their lips.”

  “Whose idea was it to give them speech organs anyway?” Redfire pondered aloud.

  “Another one of my ancestors,” Keeler sighed. “On my mother’s line, but that’s a story for another time. King me!”

  chapter six

  Pegasus – Primary Command/Main Bridge

  “Inverting light-sail geometry to braking configuration,“ Lt. Jesus Powerhouse, the helmsman, called.

  Young, dark skinned, and over-muscled, with a shaved head, Powerhouse did double-duty as an Odyssey Warfighter and triple duty wiping the floor with anyone who challenged him in Recreational “No Quarter,” a milder¤ version of traditional Sapphirean martial arts combat.

  On his display, the great energy fields around the ship reversed direction and polarity. Without a sound, without a sense of deceleration, Pegasus dropped below light-speed and prepared to transition out of hyperspace. Keeler and Lear were at the Inner Bridge, seated behind Lt. Navigator Change. Redfire stood off to Keeler’s right, hands crossed behind his back.

  “Sub-light velocity. Retracting light-sails,” called Powerhouse.

  “Acknowledged,” Lt. Navigator Change was surrounded by holographic charts. Numbers flowed past her, bright blue, turning red as they fell toward zero.

  On the display, the energy fields drew in around the ship. “Sails retracted. Gravity Engines on-line.

  Speed decreasing to transition,” reported the helm officer.

  “Transition in …5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Transition,” Change reported.

  Pegasus fell to one-half light speed. A beam of particles, hyper-gravitons and even more exotic mutants from the quantum bestiary, shot out from the ship to create a wormhole immediately ahead of it, a temporary fissure between dimensions, a gateway between universes. A second later, Pegasus flew into the rift, which collapsed and sealed behind it.

  Inside the ship, there was a black flash. They were through.