To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  She hated the knee knockers and widow makers. Anytime she had to step through a hatch sucked; she had the fading bruise on her right temple to prove it. She used to love going for jogs; now she either had to do it in the race track around the perimeter of the gym, which was maddening, or on a treadmill. The only good thing about the treadmill was that it allowed her to plug in a VR headset, music, and load up a nice country jog. But that made them popular with the crew. There were only so many treadmills to go around. They had even resorted to scheduling their usage a day ago. That would hopefully keep the bickering down.

  She did her best to take on her secondary duties as ship's counselor, though she found talking to people interrupted her rare downtime with Jamey or even her sleep if someone had a bad fight and needed a shoulder when they came off duty.

  From what scuttlebutt and info she'd picked up, the ship was running smoothly. Jamey spent a lot of time making sure the hyperdrive was finely tuned. When he wasn't working on that or helping the dolphins with perfecting their steering controls, he worked on refining the hypersensors.

  She'd heard from his pillow talk that he wanted to get above what he termed the first band. His current goal was to get above the first octave as he termed it. So far the Captain had resisted any such efforts to speed things up. Kathy couldn't blame him. Slow and steady, this wasn't a race. Slow and steady meant they got home safe.

  Jamey and a few of the crew had started to become disillusioned with the entire process. Jamey for his part had found the day-in, day-out routine starting to pall into a dull sameness. He'd never had ship duty until Daedalus. When the ship had been doing running-up trials or in dock, he was either kept busy or could communicate with people outside the ship. Now that wasn't possible. One day tended to morph into another; only the changing of the lighting helped to indicate a ship's day from night.

  Kathy had started working with the XO to try to alleviate boredom. Unfortunately, her idea was more drills though, while Kathy envisioned something as simple as birthday celebrations. She hadn't quite had to take it to the captain yet; she didn't want to go over the XO's head. She'd heard nasty stories … but she would if the woman didn't learn to lighten up.

  “Everything okay, Kaku?” Kathy asked as she came into the dolphin's sickbay. That was another thing she'd gotten straight with Doctor Asurabi and the crew and one of the reasons for their long delay. She'd insisted the dolphins have their own medical facility near their habitat to allow her to work since Doctor Asurabi refused to allow them in the main infirmary. She knew he would be overruled if there was a serious problem, but for the day-to-day issues she could handle in the tiny closet sized clinic.

  “All good,” Kaku said.

  “Getting anywhere with the ladies?” Kathy teased, eying the dolphin as she pulled up his vitals with her tablet. He was good, no sign of a temperature which would be a possible sign of infection.

  “Good. Busy though. Too tired to play,” Kaku said, rolling from side to side to look at her.

  “Sorry, I know you are supposed to be resting. I'll leave you to it in a minute. This won't take long,” she said. She grimaced as she entered the null gravity field with him. She reached up and moved him gently to examine his implants. There was no redness or swelling around the jacks. “No itching?”

  “I didn't know you cared, Doc,” Kaku teased, eying her.

  She snorted, but finished her exam and then stepped back out of the field. She stumbled, she always did, and ignored the sputter of laughter from the fin over how klutzy the two-leg was. She ignored that too as she recovered herself with as much dignity as she could muster then ran her hands through the sterilizer field. When the device's blue UV lights shut off she picked up her tablet. “You are good. I just need a blood sample.”

  “Now?” the fin asked, sounding a bit exasperated.

  “Yep, 'fraid so,” Kathy said with a sympathetic smile as she directed her small robotic helper to draw the sample from the fin's left flipper. Kaku submitted with ill grace, lifting his flipper for the robotic arm to jab him.

  “Hey, be glad I don't have to give you a shot. Or take other samples,” Kathy said to him as the robot finished its job and retracted. A tiny bubble of blood floated free. A vacuum kicked on to suck it up as the arm returned, this time with a biofoam injector. A brief squirt and the hole was sealed. “There, all better,” Kathy said.

  “Do I get a lollipop?” Kaku asked.

  “Where did you …” Kathy eyed him and then shook her head. He was clearly teasing her, smiling that enigmatic dolphin smile as he chattered laughter at her. “Sorry fella, they don't make any fish flavored.”

  “Pity. Maybe someone should try it. New business,” the dolphin said, rolling upside down lazily. He watched her as she worked, flipping his flippers.

  Kathy glanced at him a few times as the mini lab processed the blood sample. She pursed her lips as the status was came up on her tablet. “You look okay, but I see a bit too much fat here. You aren't getting enough exercise,” she warned.

  “Can't. Too busy,” the dolphin replied.

  “Then make time. We've got what, two weeks?”

  “Hard job,” the dolphin said. He pretended to yawn. She snorted.

  “I know it's hard; we all have hard jobs. But you still need to exercise. You do and you'll find you have more energy. It will be easier to concentrate and get stuff done. Null gravity isn't doing you any favors,” she warned, shaking a finger at him.

  “Will try,” Kaku replied.

  Kathy nodded. She made a note of his sentence structure. His dropping some words was a sign of stress so she didn't push the issue further. “Okay, go on, get. Send in the next patient. And heaven help you if she's pregnant,” she said to him.

  “Will be a surprise to all of us if she is, Doc,” the dolphin replied with a splutter of laughter. “She could have at least waited until we were both awake to enjoy it,” he said. The two-leg blushed. He went through the small round hatch to his habitat and called the next patient in. When someone sleepily refused, he clapped his jaw like a gunshot. That got a squawk from a few people and a wince from Kathy. But it did serve the job; a sheepish fin came in a second or two later.

  “Well, hello, we'll make this quick as we can …” Kathy said, moving into the routine again.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  When Kathy got off shift, she checked on Jamey's whereabouts with Sylvia. He was still on duty for the next half hour so she stretched and then made her way the long route to the galley. She was tempted to wait and ambush him, but she wasn't feeling particularly randy. She nodded to the crew in passing. She was tempted to take her own advice she'd given to the dolphins and exercise, but she didn't want to be all sweaty and worn out afterward. Besides, she had such little time to be with Jamey; most of it was while sleeping.

  “Is Jamey busy, Sylvia?” Kathy asked through her implants as she paused half way to the galley. She wanted to know if she should grab a couple meals and head back to their cabin for a private meal or not.

  “I do not know if Mister Castill is busy,” the AI replied with a robotic tone of voice. Kathy frowned thoughtfully. Sylvia was a child of Athena and the coders, but she was a dumb child. She barely qualified as interactive. She never initialized something on her own. Apparently the bridge crew had specified her being so … limited. Dull. A computer. Primitive really, barely functional as an AI at all, she mused. Captain Locke and the XO seemed to like it that way; both didn't like a talking ship.

  “Open a text file. Ask him if he wants me to pick up dinner and meet back home or not,” she said.

  “Query not understood,” Sylvia replied in a mechanical tone.

  Kathy pursed her lips in annoyance. “Never mind,” she said, opening a text to Jamey using her implants and bookmarks. When she saw a series of crew members moving through the companionway to go to their duty stations, she realized the ship was close to the shift change. “Jamey, do you … want me … to …” she flattened against the bulkhead
opposite the hatch as the XO came by. “ …pick up dinner and meet home …” she nodded politely to the woman in passing. The XO scowled slightly at her but kept moving since there was a lot of traffic.

  Kathy hit send and then waited. After a moment her communications pinged, making her wince. She hated that; it was like when the klaxons went off but internal. She regretted leaving her tablet back in her “office.” Yes was his simple reply. She smiled and went to pick up dinner like a good wife.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Twenty three days later, right on time, Daedalus had to exit hyperspace 1.4 light years out from Sol for the navigator to orient the ship's course. A sensor sweep of the surrounding stars found that they had overshot their mark by nearly half a light year, most likely by the wild maneuvering in hyperspace to avoid mass shadows. “All right people, you know the schedule. We have two and a half days left of the schedule and the clock is ticking. Get with it,” the XO ordered.

  Captain Locke ordered communications to report back to the Lagroose station 34 with a communications laser while the navigators and computers adjusted their course. They reported their position, news, letters to home, and a full telemetry dump since they had days at their location before the computers finished crunching the adjusted course data.

  The crew rigged the ship for the second jump. Since they had the three-day window of downtime, the engineering crew did a complete diagnostics and maintenance of the ship. Everything they found was documented and fed into the telemetry feed. Work bots and crews examined the hull and fed the scans into the feed as well.

  Jamey managed to send out the files of data he had amassed on the hyperdrive as well as some of his intriguing ideas for future hyperdrives. His sister's off-the-cuff missive was looking more and more like the way to go. The ring force emitters were extremely inefficient in his opinion; he was fairly certain now after watching the system in action that they wouldn't get above the sub-band of hyperspace they had gotten into. They had power to spare, but the rings and limited sensor range were the bottleneck now he thought. He made those two things clear when he dictated notes and messages to the design team back home. Hopefully Trey would redirect some of the effort of the science teams to build off of what he'd said after they thoroughly examined the sensor feeds the Captain had sent back.

  Terabytes of data were flowing out of the ship along the laser; for some reason the plan had called for them to send everything right down to a copy of their running software. In theory he could understand; the coders back home wanted to see what the intelligent feedback loops in Sylvia had done to adapt to the ship as they settled into hyperspace. Really, there wasn't much to go on.

  He almost forgot to send something to Hannah and Bret until his exasperated wife poked him into doing so. He sent them brief visual recordings and then dived back into examining the hyperdrive for flaws.

  When nothing came to their attention after their intense scrutiny, the Captain ordered them to jump again. The adjusted course was 3.31 light years to Proxima Centauri 1 and would take roughly seven and a half weeks to get there. This time Jamey found himself off duty; he was just too tired after all the shifts he'd put in to stay on duty for the jump. The chief engineer had kicked him out to rest, insisting they could handle it. Kathy found him in their quarters mopping and staring at the LCD screen with a tablet in his lap. They cuddled on the bed as the ship jumped into hyperspace once more.

  Chapter 20

  Brandon got through to Hannah with an email. Curious over who it was and how they had gotten through her filters she played it, unsure about the address. She was tired, so his apology and sympathy for the loss of her brother didn't register at first. Hannah was shocked and confused by his email. She was just coming off duty so she was tired she thought, running frustrated hands through her hair. The email confused her; she read it over and over. The more she read it the more she was confused and … disturbed by that statement. It felt … ominous.

  “What do you mean?” she asked under her breath as she typed in the response. She could use the voice address system, a lot of people did, but typing helped keep her fingers flexible. He pinged back in a moment later with a brief response. “Let's meet up to catch up,” he said. “Coffee?” he asked.

  She read that out loud then pursed her lips. What the hell game was he playing? she asked herself. She was older now, wiser. She wasn't a very young college coed he could dupe into spreading her legs.

  “I'm not on Earth,” she said softly to herself as she typed in her rejection letter. “I can't get groundside now.”

  “Good, neither can I. I'm in Mars orbit,” he replied a moment later, sounding smug. She raised a surprised eyebrow at that news. Then it caught up with her, his response time. He'd responded almost instantly to her previous email. Had he been on Earth there should have been at least a sixteen-minute hard time between her email and his. “Okay,” she drawled, now unsure of what to do.

  A vid chat invite icon popped up on her desktop. She frowned, staring at it until it registered. It was from him. “Brandon …” she sighed and reached out. She hesitated briefly but then her curiosity got the best of her and she tapped the icon. She sat back as the window opened and her camera turned on.

  “Hi, pretty lady,” Brandon said, ever the charmer.

  Hannah couldn't help but preen a little, it had been a long time since she'd seen him, since she'd … she shook herself mentally. “What's up?”

  “Nice chit chat,” he said shaking his head.

  “I'm sorry, I'm tired,” she said, rolling her shoulders.

  “You look as lovely as ever,” he said as she said that. They looked at each other for a moment then chuckled softly.

  “Flatterer,” she accused.

  “Guilty as charged. Going to lock me up?” he asked, grinning.

  “Don't tempt me,” she mock growled, eying him. Ever the charmer she thought, feeling her traitorous body react. He wasn't even in the room and … down girl! Down! Heel! She thought.

  “Oh, you know me, I am ever into tempting such a beauty,” Brandon said again.

  “Me? Now?” She demanded, looking down at herself. She'd just come off a long hard shift in the neo clinic. She stunk; she knew it. She was gritty, tired, and in dire need of a shower and …

  “Of course,” he said. He cocked his head as his smile slipped. Her heart skipped when she saw the somber expression. “You know me; I always liked it when you let your guard down,” he said softly.

  “There is that,” she murmured, remembering their morning love making sessions. She'd been so self-conscious, worried about morning breath and her hair. He hadn't cared.

  “Now that we've gotten that out of our systems,” he drawled. “So, coffee? So we can catch up?”

  “Where are you at?” she asked carefully.

  “Mars orbit like I said. I'm working as a yard manager for a small start-up that recently got bought out by Lagroose Industries,” he said, smiling lazily. “So, I'm available,” he said, raising an eyebrow her way. He practically leered she thought.

  “I'm not. I'm on a classified station right now; no way I can get any downtime for now. My next vacation isn't for a month,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I was going to say I could come there, but since you said it's classified …” he sighed. “Well, we could meet up later I suppose.”

  “Sure,” she said before she could catch herself.

  His eyes gleamed as if he'd won something. He looked over his shoulder though. “Look Hannah, I've got to cut this short. We've got a problem here, and I need to handle it. So, talk again? We can arrange our schedules maybe? Maybe play tourist groundside?” he asked.

  “I … maybe,” she said, not quite evasive but not ready to commit to anything.

  “Think about it,” he said with a half-smile that had always made her feel … down! She thought, now getting annoyed. “Later snookums,” he teased as he cut the link.

  She sat back, basking in the glow of his compliments, her r
eason for calling him forgotten in the heat of the moment.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  A week after Daedalus jumped Amelia Irons entered the Mars University graduate college for medicine. She had blossomed, growing upwards and out of the shy reserved girl into a more confident woman. She was highly respected by her peers for her knowledge and stubborn insistence on digging in and getting a job done, no matter how difficult or messy it was.

  She did her final internship at Mars General Hospital, the busiest hospital on the planet. She moved from one department to the next each month, never staying in one for long. It was exhausting and exhilarating, and with more and more Neos around, never boring. Humans who had come to Mars had wanted to meet aliens, to see new worlds and turn Mars into a new Eden. Now they had their chance, and they would have help.

  Through Isley she had met Hannah some time ago. With their mutual interest in space and medicine the two hit it off, so much that Isley teased them relentlessly about being excluded. Hannah had been distant, she'd felt a bit guilty at the situation until she realized Isley was just being a smartass. Amelia ignored the soap opera, she was too intent on her future. She wasn't sure where she wanted to end up, but she wasn't sure she wanted to stay on Mars. Mars was changing, they'd had a smattering of rain, but not enough in her opinion. The new terraforming projections pushed back the forecasts of rain by another five years. She was young and impatient, waiting for red mars to turn green was agonizing to her. She could just imagine how it felt to the older generation.

  She was encouraged by Emi, Ezra, Isley, and Hannah to continue her education while she made up her mind. Hannah put a good reference into the company for Amelia. If she ever did apply to Lagroose, that would hopefully help her get her foot in the door.