The Resolute

by G. Weldon Tucker

  Like those before them, they had the choice, if they wished. A simple pair of tablets and this mortal coil would be tossed aside, peacefully.

  Not just yet, they decided.

  They became roommates, remaining best friends, and each kept the spirits of the other up, as it should be. But it was only a few years, and then, despite the presence of growing family, there was little to do.

  The two became bored, then low enough in that spirit, that they took the final, simple way out.

  Holding hands, they took the first tablet. They waited an hour to get nicely relaxed, and together, they took the second. They were gone in less than an hour. Painless, worry free, and easy. Once again, without stigma or reproach.

  In this, the human mind paralleled the coldly logical Cyborgs: It did save a great deal of resources.

  -----

  Every department had been restructured, realigned and improved on their families’ watch. With Morgans and Washingtons lined up to carry on, now, they could sail on with confidence that they and their men had done a damned fine job…

  -----

  The Resolute was still making good time. The city inside of her was progressing nicely, and things were quiet. No more surprise visits from Cyborgs, and surely, no aliens. Or, if they showed, they were not discovered. The Navy thought perhaps the problems were left behind.

  Packets from the moon were no more. Dutifully, Resolute sent off their compact reports, right down the vector line they had followed well over forty years. Or, so they hoped. The asteroid may well have changed their course by a degree, in which case, the reports were useless. So, once a week send out became once a month. Not because it made any difference. There was simply nothing to report.

  Meanwhile, space is a frightfully empty system. Despite the near misses, there are trillions upon trillions of cubic miles with absolutely nothing in them but tiny hints of hydrogen molecules. Only bad luck could put the Resolute down, now.

  The galaxy below them, for the keel always pointed to the nearest object, even if it was a galaxy, was massive. In all these years, they had hardly traveled across the first spiral arm that held Earth.

  All Earth-like planet detection systems ran on full, all the time, and nothing resembling a habitation for humans showed on any scanner. They were running almost parallel to the spinning galaxy, nowhere near the dangerous black hole that made up the center.

  But, life goes on, right? Families grow and shrink, rise and fall, and some endure. And so it was with UE Resolute on her straight shot to… wherever.

  BOOK III

  243 AL

  CHAPTER 1

  The good ship UE Resolute, so named because people thought it would be a very formidable adversary, was sailing like an arrow in flight.

  This name came from the few remaining people of United Earth who had sent her on her way. More accurate, the few hundred thousand on the moon who had launched her.

  But it had been a long range plan, a dangerous undertaking, and now nearing two hundred and forty-three years later, Resolute had become a perpetual sailing city in a can.

  Resolute, undeterred. Uh, huh. Like the aliens speak English or anything close, right? Senior Commander Angela Washington thought, for the thousandth time. Make that the ten thousandth time. It had been a very long, multi-generational voyage.

  She was born on board, she was raised on board, and frankly, she thought this perfectly the way it should be. The only thing she knew was this ship. And she knew it very well.

  General bridge duty, even when she was in charge, was boring. They sailed high ‘above’ the beautiful Milky Way galaxy, searching for Earth-like planets while on an arrow straight path to… somewhere, but once you had seen about a billion stars and thousands of candidates, it was hard to get excited. Besides, the system took care of the search, the examination, and most of the ship’s functions.

  Angela was, like all of the ship’s people, who were either military or civilian, a ninth generation progeny, born and raised, highly educated, too, on the Resolute. Barely thirty years of age by two weeks, she had been a rising star, guided by a very experienced family, all while being watched carefully by her superiors. Which, now, at last, included only one man. The most important one, her Captain.

  Gone were the days of an Admiral and three Captains. The Council had complained about the salary and top heavy command, years ago. So, she was stuck a Commander, with the same power, but not the title and pay.

  Considering a generation to average twenty five years, anything they knew about mother Earth was in the movie archives, where six million films resided on digital storage. Simply think back on one’s own history, and more than one or two generations is simply too distant.

  They were well over two hundred and forty-two light years from Earth, traveling 96.7% light speed, the best any engine, any ship, had ever done, at least, as far as she knew. They had been out here a long time. Still, people were working on speed right here on the ship.

  They were just ‘above’ the thick pattern of the disk shaped galaxy, over the next closest arm from the Earth Solar System, counter clockwise. Above being relative, as they had elected to keep the keel down toward the galaxy and its billions of stars at all times. And, they were well over one billion miles from the nearest entity, be it sun, planet or asteroid in the galaxy. Clear sailing.

  Above them, then, was mostly nothing, dim stars and galaxies far, far away, all right. Much farther than any ship of United Earth would even consider, in the order of a million, or a billion light years. Man was not that desperate. Yet. Maybe.

  At the time the big ship was built, staffed and sent on its way from a moon construction port, cryogenics was still a few hundred years off. So, no sleeping through to the destination… if there was indeed a planetary system waiting at the end of the tunnel. Cryogenics were discussed and dismissed. Their primary objective, their target, was not much more than another five to ten light years out.

  It had taken forty-two years to build the Resolute and her sisters. UE Explorer, UE Hope and UE Seeker were the other three. The launch year was 2224 for all. Earth calendar.

  Eventually, after launch, it became obvious that Earth calendars were pretty much unnecessary. People measured the space of time, year wise, in human events. And an event of such a magnitude, their launch, certainly qualified.

  So, after the first 25 years in space, the inhabitants of Resolute voted to start their own calendar, beginning the year one on the departure date. It was now the year 243 AL, after launch, Resolute calendar. Earth may not even still be there.

  As far as anyone knew, nothing traveled faster than light, and that included the energized message packet signals shot back down their path toward Earth’s moon. As long as they stayed the course, it was like a tunnel, right to their home planet. Well, at least the moon.

  But, when those signals began to take more than couple of months to get there, and no answer was returned, communication stopped. Of course, there was the fear that something more powerful than man might capture that signal and trace the Resolute right to her nose. That, too, had been stopped.

  -----

  Angela’s space ancestors, dead well over a two hundred years, now, had been some of the first hardy explorers to board the newly completed ships. Morgans and Washingtons abounded, interwoven among hundreds of other family lines, and still proving to be the strongest line of leadership available. Good DNA.

  Resolute, like its sister ships, was designed to house five hundred fifty thousand people, from a seed population of just sixty thousand, all chosen from medical, arts, engineering, technical and science backgrounds. But anything over three hundred and fifty thousand was turning out to be problematic. Resources in the can were finite. Despite recycling and careful sharing of those resources, they would run out long before they reached any planet they could use.

  It was expected to be an ultra long voyage, a desperate shot for each ship, and like a city, each, they would grow to somewhere short of capac
ity.

  Half the crew was single upon boarding, and only those with advanced degrees were included. The exception was military Officers with their Masters, and enlisted men with at least a four year degree. A very selective process, but necessary.

  Race or country did not matter, education and the willingness to face unfathomable death in deep space were the criteria. And even those were carefully screened for physical conditioning, mental stability, and psychological strength.

  Only those pairings where these things meshed could board. No laborers and engineers as a pair sort of thing. In fact, if a Masters in anything ‘useful’ was brought aboard, that person had a chance to finish school on the Resolute, obtaining a doctorate, or be assigned ‘helper’ duties under those that already held one.

  Though, truth be told, many a pairing failed, the brighter, more educated of the pair electing for the voyage, rather than stay on the endangered planet. The less educated, and therefore less trusting? No way.

  Marriages, however, had died out in the early twenty second century, having fallen to less than ten percent. The commitment was still there, and people lived together, had children, and every aspect except the religiously tainted marriage ceremony.

  On Resolute, no space could be wasted, and every brain cell had been needed. Anyone could be trained for muscle. Not too many vice versa. Still, a hell of a lot of Ph.Ds had to learn how to herd cattle, sheep and pigs, while others became strong advocates of the hydroponics and proposed no meat diets. They, in turn, developed green thumbs… and genetic skills.

  In any case, university level teachers, technical and flight trainers, medical personnel, geneticists, in fact, anything that might sustain and build a population was necessary. Everyone else was pretty much out of luck. This was a do or die mission.

  Even if they found a habitable planet, no one would be able to get word to Earth in time… though they would try. They certainly would not try to get back. Home, now, was Resolute.

  But nearing full capacity came far too fast. Humans sometimes, no matter how bright, are slow learners. Starting with that core group of sixty thousand, each paired couple limited to two children, sixty soon became one hundred and fifty, and that became three hundred and fifty thousand literally in a very few generations.

  By simple extrapolation, the next few years would bring the population over four hundred thousand and put a significant strain on resources. Something had to be done.

  The Council put their collective brains to word to solve this before it became life threatening…

  CHAPTER 2

  By the fifth generation the Council had limited expansion three ways. People older than seventy-five could no longer draw resources. To be coldly efficient, their argument was sound. Those in the advanced ages produced nothing, provided little other than fading wisdom, and consumed much.

  So, they could share with the allotment of their family who may wish to carry them, or they could elect to be laid to rest. Most chose the latter. Euthanasia. It was sold as a simple go to sleep process, and the cold mentality of the humans evolving welcomed it.

  The city afloat over the Milky Way had a mission, and it was not to deliver old folks to retirement. Cold, as expressed, but both sane and efficient. And the elderly knew they had to make room.

  Frankly, the scientists had perfected euthanasia to the point that people actually looked forward to their final ride.

  -----

  The second way, these two past generations, was to limit it to one child per couple, not even replacing themselves as a pair. This held the population a bit lower, because as everyone knows, attrition is an ongoing human condition.

  Balancing attrition against new births, they got the population more manageable. More than enough to seed a world, but not so much to strain the entire ship’s resources. However, in the other sister vessels, no one had a clue. No contact since leaving the moon. They could all be dead… or they could be thriving on a new planet.

  Simple sterility services at the time of that first birth assured compliance without the inhuman abortion process. Both parties. No cheating, so to speak, that way.

  It had worked. The population was mostly stabilized, eighty percent under the age of forty, and thus viable for seeding any planet. They were currently holding around three hundred and twenty-five thousand, and this was much more survivable.

  It was crowded, but manageable. Of course, Resolute was huge, a monster cruise line, but it still had limits.

  Everything they consumed they produced, from water to food, to tools and transportation. The engines provided far more power than needed and the excess was converted for the power supply for the myriad computer stations, lights, trams and such. A self-contained city with no outside help.

  Even the products from human waste to garbage found a place in the process of thruster fuel, refined water, recycled steel or iron and so on. Everything in between came from within those long walls. When something was well beyond salvage, there were always the discharge tubes, though these were used sparingly.

  By the time anything of potential use was gleaned from the leftovers, there was usually not much left.

  This material was collected in cylindrical containers and packed tight. Efficiently, so were the dead. Once every few weeks, or when the tubes were filled, they conducted an exercise. The material was ejected, retaining the steel containers, and the object froze solid in seconds outside the ship. The system then conducted a brief firing exercise and turned all packages to dust. No threat, no mess.

  On this, the last expected generation onboard, meaning they would hopefully be groundside, somewhere soon, the younger generation would then be free of constraints and fill the new planet with humans. If they found a planet. And, if not, there was always the next generation… and so on. As it had been for a quarter of a millennia.

  And they had a very dynamic way of doing that, once unleashed. From millions of containers, frozen eggs, sperm, even embryos, they could develop millions in as little as ten years. The trick, of course, was not to outrun resources, whatever they might be on a planet. But first, of course, they had to get… somewhere.

  -----

  The third constraint was military life, which in this era meant no children, no spouse or pairing, and at least temporary, annualized sterility. Any female in the service who became pregnant was paired with the DNA proven father and she was cast loose from military life. That was unless she elected to freeze the embryo for ‘later.’ Of course, the reverse was not true. Paternal duties rarely interfered with service requirements.

  Angela Morgan was military to her toes, a chosen profession, and annually sterilized as were those in ranks above her and the multitude below. In fact, one fifth of the entire ship was military. It was, essentially, the best job in the can. She took her shots once a year, guaranteeing sterility for fourteen months. But then, she was not the type to test the limits.

  Oh, there had been those fumbling tries a few times, somewhere along the way, mostly in the Academy, where it seemed everybody learned something about sex, but she discovered, at least for her, sex was not such a demanding master. In fact, it was no master at all. Let the others have their fun. If it kept her cool and aloof, why that was what the others expected at the top. And, even back then, she knew she was destined for the top.

  The ship was still crowded, though. Despite its maximum possible five hundred and fifty thousand, the current three hundred and twenty-five was a hell of a load. The hydroponics division was stretched, the animal husbandry department was strained, and even the very air they breathed was being processed at only ninety-six percent efficiency.

  Interestingly, evolution can work in small timelines, too. Less food, less air, and the result by Angela’s generation was that kids, for the first time in hundreds of centuries, were shorter, less body mass and required less of those precious resources. Angela was barely five foot, two inches less than her mother and four less than her father.

  But then, just about
everyone around her in the military were equally more compact, and it had hardly been noticed that there had been an adjustment. Nature has its ways…

  -----

  At ten am, sharp, a door swished open behind her and someone at the desks on the rear wall cried, “Captain on deck!” Angela and everyone else snapped to attention, throwing salutes. Captain Darryl Morgan lived up to his family reputation. He ran a tight ship.

  “As you were, gentlemen!” the Captain intoned, snapping a crisp salute to cover the bridge. Old school, he refused to separate women from men. Really old school, as in dinosaur.

  But he was approaching seventy-five, mandatory retirement, and he would be replacing himself with one of the three Bridge Commanders. Angela was not about to complain; she was first in line. He would have to deliberately bypass her, and she knew him too well for that.

  There were another four hundred commanders in the Navy, scattered about as MP Station Commanders, Supplies Commanders, Food Service Commanders, Systems Commanders, and so on. But the only ones that mattered to Angela were her immediate competition, those other two Bridge Commanders, of which she held Senior rank.

  She had the grades and the training to run the entire ship, and she had run it during two of Captain Morgan’s heart attacks this past year. He was offline for two months, both times. No matter the progress on Earth to limit attacks, not all of it could be contained. And that had not changed in the two hundred and forty years of travel. So, with the stress of handling his crowded ship, despite Angela’s help, Captain Morgan was failing. And he knew it.

  The old man growled, “Commander? Where are we?” He called all Commanders the same. It was inefficient to call out ‘Senior Commander’ every time.

  “Two hundred twenty three point nine one light years from Earth, original heading, no recent obstructions. Everything is in the green, Sir!” Angela answered crisply.