“The tumors are most likely radiation sickness, and there is nothing to do but try to make him comfortable,” the best Oncologist on Resolute told them. “Too many, spread all over his brain, so any more treatment at this time will simply… kill him.”
The other Doctor, a respected Neurologist and surgeon added, two days later, “Our recommendation, love him, keep him as comfortable as possible, but he will not have another year.”
CHAPTER 4
Several months later, both of them had given up their positions on the Council. They wanted to spend their last available and precious time together, not in a wrangling match over some minor point.
Meanwhile, Jack had declined, plagued by vicious headaches, and had somehow visibly changed, low in weight, even shorter in stature, when he could stand. All too soon, An old, sick man. Yet, he still clung to life. Angela watched him slide all too quickly. The proud, strong, confident Jack was no longer visible. She was certain he was inside there, somewhere, and she was right beside him when, every so often, that man peeked out of that shell.
Angela no longer left their quarters, an expansive four room system that had belonged to the previous High Council behind them. Meals were delivered, services came to the quarters, and there was no reason. Friends and of course, Brandon, came to visit regularly, wishing them well. There were still a hell of a lot of Morgan cousins and Washingtons, and in nearly constant streams, one set or another came to pay their respects. Eventually, Angela had to call a halt. All but Brandon were excluded, with plenty of thanks, but it was too difficult.
She had about come to the conclusion that anywhere in this tin can was pretty much the same as anywhere else in this tin can. And she was loathe to leave Jack’s side.
Angela, despite her civilian status, kept her battle boards and vid duplicates from the bridge right there in her home office. She monitored everything on the bridge. Not that she could provide fast decisions, but that in hopes she could prevent poor ones.
-----
On one particular boring afternoon, Nance’s voice came strong and assured as she sang out, “Solar system pattern in forward vid, Captain!”
Angela checked her copy of the bridge’s forward vid. The smudge was there, almost dead center, the apparent target, but only the computer could read it. Nance was trusting the computer’s view.
Captain Willits said, simply, “Expand view, Commander.” Angela knew that Dale loved Nance a great deal, always had, and their pairing on the ship, and on the bridge was like a blessing. So were their two children, nearly grown.
They had helped to change the Navy rules, both staying in, rearing children. It was only right, and Angela had proudly pronounced the change. They both had earned it. At the time there had been plenty of room on board Resolute.
It was starting to get crowded, once again, and perhaps they would have to institute new rules… But hopefully, after my time, Angela often thought. Then, she thought sorrowfully, our time. And our time has already passed.
There was a star, a bright dot in the center of several lighter dots to the outside in unknown orbits. They could not yet see enough detail to see that Goldilocks condition, as they were simply too far away.
Within a day or so, it became much clearer. The planets were all on a single plane. The typical disc for planet formation and control. It looked inviting.
They were still a few months out, even at around five times light speed, so there was no great exclamation of relief or exultation of the discovery. Not yet.
Though, truth be told both Angela and Jack felt their heartbeat pick up. Could it be? A home?
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But then, only a few days after Angela’s seventy fourth birthday party, several of the Council and retainers having attended, there came a warning from the system. Some kind of nearly invisible shield, a sphere, surrounded the planetary system. However, it was becoming far more visible as they sailed in at high speed.
The sphere appeared constructed by nature or man as a wall of ice and rock, big and small, some far too big for even Resolute’s new laser to handle, and of course, everything seemed gigantic to the small fighters. Atypical of asteroid belts, this thing was like a ball, completely enclosing trillions upon trillions of cubic miles of space. Inside it was the planetary system they so desperately needed to explore.
Resolute began the time consuming and arduous task of deceleration, staying aligned with the fighters, but cutting speed quickly enough to be ready for the pass-through. But not so fast as to injure the crew and population.
She finally slowed, weeks instead of minutes, as did the fighters, and they lined up to slip between the multi-sized objects. They used their learned process to slide through this huge cloud of debris unscathed.
That took another month. Much better than ever before, but with experience comes talent.
As they had done coming into Renewal, they slowed, aligned with the direction their area of ice and asteroids were traveling, and delicately worked their way down… down being toward the far away star in the center. There was apparently just enough gravity to hold these objects. But even at twenty thousand miles an hour, very fast in relation to most of the galaxy, the asteroids crawled by, just as before…
No one they knew had an idea of what this mess out here might be, though the common consensus, a guess, was a failed planetary system that had gotten caught in this sun’s weak gravity. They were a hell of a long way out.
As they came through this dangerous sphere, somehow unscathed, below them lay the pretty planetary system, in much better view.
Resolute had traveled over twenty trillion miles since leaving Friend and they had nearly reached the targeted system. It was looking better and better all the time.
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Over the next forty-five days, the Resolute worked its way past a massive gas giant planet, one all blue, another tiny, barely more than a huge ball of ice, and then a monster planet with a tremendous magnetic field. If it were not for their respective engine capabilities, they would have been sucked right into it.
Oddly, the gas giant was mostly sulfuric acid in vapor, and highly unlikely to support life.
Now, came an asteroid ring, which they promptly avoided by simply going up and over it.
Soon, the system objects remaining began to come at them pretty quickly, often dots of blue, red, yellow and such, which became planets and were bypassed quickly.
The most distant, their goal, the blue one, was now a day away, when Captain Willits ordered the next phase of deceleration procedures to begin. With the new chairs, no one in the inner areas of the ship needed to lock themselves down so tightly as at the bridge. And only for a short while. This was much faster, coming down from only one light speed.
Then, they set their nose on just missing this new blue planet, so as to come in on an orbit of more than a thousand miles off the surface.
Nance, standing, letting Chips do the work, took Dale’s hand and they stared as the system got slowly bigger, clearer. It was looking more and more like a home.
In their quarters, Angela patiently dressed Jack for a field trip. He had not been ‘outside’ for more than two years. He had survived longer than expectations, but it was a miserable existence and Angela knew it. But this he so wanted to see, live. Well, without windows, nothing was live, but a monster vidscreen in the clarity available in this era was damned close to live.
Dressing him was becoming a challenge. He was not strong, nor upright, and he was struggling more and more to help in these daily chores. His attention span had grown too short, his abilities declining, but Angela was not about to deprive him of this important event. If she had to carry him, she would get him to the observation deck. A misnomer, as it was more of an auditorium with a huge screen, but put in the front nose of the ship, the illusion was nearly perfect.
They were going to see their new home, even if it was only from the viewing deck…
CHAPTER 5
Angela now held hands with he
r lover, her mate, her best friend. They sat in the viewing chairs in the below bridge observation deck. He had come to the viewing area in a wheelchair, but she and an attendant had helped him get comfortable on the space couch set to one side of the room. They were now alone.
The massive vid-screen, 120x200 inches, was decorated with side curtains and a valence, and, for all intents and purposes, resembled a twenty first century window on Earth, rather than a true window. There were no windows on the entire ship. Now, on the couch, where they had sat so many times as lovers, they could see the planet below them, the moon around it and the big and bright star off in the distance.
“I remember being here in this room the first time years ago, watching the galaxy roll by under us. I was a young woman, an Ensign I believe, and I thought I knew everything. Then, I guess I grew out of the wonder. I think, maybe, I have gotten it back!”
It pained him to talk too much, and his meds were self-adjusting, keeping him just under the intolerable range for the pain. But he could see her blue eyes as clear and bright as the day he met her. “Yes, you seem to have a new wonder about you. Like it is all new…” a painful pause, while he struggled to draw a breath, then, continuing, “Well, I missed those days, but I had my own. I remember you and I,” another pause, and he regained strength, finishing, “… exploring each other, those early days of our pairing! My Chips, baby, we are heading for eighty. Has it really been over forty years?” His little boy smile played for her, a moment, and she tearfully kissed his cheek.
Against the softness of her silken gray hair, he whispered, “I know you don’t want me to leave, but baby,” another long pause, then, “… I want the euthanasia program,” and he struggled to breathe. Finally, he managed, “I hurt so damned bad. This is going to get worse, you know. I do not want to wait out the end of my life a vegetable on machines.”
She did not remind him that he had signed the papers a week ago, and had taken the initial capsule with his dinner last night, what little he could eat, and his secondary capsule with his breakfast this very day. His own request. Her regret, but she could no longer stand to see him in such pain. This would shut his system down within ten hours in a most gentle, serene way. It would not be long.
Instead, she said, softly, “I agree with you, Jack.” She waited to see if he remembered on his own, and paused to adjust the straps on both of them, just in case. Old bones break far too easily. “I don’t know that I want to grow so old that I am feeble. But I do want to see us find a planet. I like the looks of this one.”
“Me, too. Good star, looks like a water and land planet…” A long silence. Then, he managed, “How soon before we actually enter orbit over it?”
“Soon, dear heart. The last of the bearing has us coming in about a thousand miles above it. Too far to make out detail, but it is still gorgeous. Look, lots of water, ice caps, deserts, maybe mountains. It is beautiful!”
More silence. Afraid, for a moment, she glanced at him, happy to see he was merely sleeping. In the quiet, exhausted from her worry, from her heartfelt attempts to keep him going, she joined him for a few minutes.
While Angela dozed a while, a common habit, lately, Jack came awake and quietly watched the planet. Then, he began to pay close attention. Something was niggling at him. He fought through the wave of pain and tried to keep control.
He gently patted Angela’s hand. Her hands were still lily white and wrinkle free, a benefit of no sunshine or radiation, even for the elderly. She opened her eyes to see him awake, a look of interest on his face she had not seen in a while.
“You need to… see this… honey!” he said, haltingly.
She looked at the huge screen, so much like a window… then did a double take, him, then the vid, and she said, almost gasped… “Earth? We are coming home… to Earth! My God!” The vid made everything clear and bright. The continents, the oceans, the… missing cities… What had happened?
“I thought so. Never saw it, of course, but I have seen the pictures and such… I need to get a message to… Captain Willits to be aware…” he paused, his eyes frightened, while he drew several shallow breaths. Then, he took control again, “We do not know what is happening there.”
To Angela’s dismay, he looked confused a moment, unable to fathom his wrist communicator. Truth be told, it had been turned off almost six months, now. He had a tendency to interfere, another trait of the elderly who feel left out of the loop. And in his ill health, he often suggested solutions that were seriously outdated.
Angela kindly put a hand over his wrist and said, “Let me. I have waited my entire life to say this!” She popped the lid on own her wrist communicator and called up Captain Willits on the holo.
He came up, immediately. Yes, Councilwoman… Vice Admiral?”
“Do you know where we are, Dale?”
“System says it is an S class star system… ten planets, most of them gas or huge…”
“No, where are we, exactly?”
“I do not understand, Captain?”
So much for book learning, and Dale was a very bright man. So, she enlightened him, with, “We are inside Earth’s home solar system, and that bright dot is the sun. We are coming home, Captain!”
“Holy shit!.... Uhhh, sorry, ma’am!”
“No worry. But Earth is sure to be overrun with Cyborg forms, probably no humans. They may have space equipped defenses, Captain.”
“Yes, ma’am. Fighters are well out in front, looking now, ma’am. We will be extra careful! And we have a hell of a lot of EMP ordinance, ma’am!”
Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapons shut down every kind of power operated equipment, from the simplest communicator to the largest power grid, and in between, those sensitive computers and Cyborgs… And no damage to infrastructure or real life forms.
That did not guarantee a clean sweep, however. Any system or robot in a hardened, shielded bunker could withstand the attack. The hope was that they could diminish the forces enough to finish the job by hand.
Shortly, probably during which time Dale verified Angela’s discovery, an announcement came from the system, Chips, “Resolute is now in orbit around Earth, our home planet. So far, no resistance, no Cyborgs… and, well, no humans. In fact, sadly, no evidence of any existence of either. We will spend the next month assessing it from afar, and also checking out the moon for survivors.”
The two aged people, one very sick, the other simply tired, sat there in a sense of triumph. They had finished the mission given them nearly forty years ago. The mission given Resolute nearly three hundred years ago. More important, they had lived to see it through! He was seventy-three, she was nearly seventy-one.
Angela turned to her mate, seeing a faraway look in his eyes, that little boy smile playing around his mouth, and her heartbeat picked up. He was somewhere far in the past, out of range of the pain.
She slipped her straps and moved to lay in a familiar position across his lap, her shoulders on the armrest so that her arms could reach around his neck. She whispered, hoping he could still respond to her presence, “Kiss me for our good luck, Jack. I cannot believe it… home.”
He held her close, kissed her, and whispered, “I love you. More than anything at all, Angela.”
“I know. Remember, I will always love you! I will find you again, my heart!” She looked into his eyes, seeing pain and love, a tragic combination. She drew a deep, shuddery breath and whispered, “You can go to sleep now, my mate, my lover. We are home!”
He tried to smile, but could not. He closed his eyes and lay his face on her shoulder. She held him until he was completely still. It was over. Her Jack was gone. No more pain, no more terror. It was over.
She cried for an hour before she began to pull herself together. She was, once again, alone. But this time she was coming home. With luck, to be buried on the planet of her ancestors. Her roots.
She was still crying when Brandon found them and summoned the medics. The EMT team gently covered Jack’s body on a stre
tcher, and then Brandon helped her back to her quarters.
Home. It was so… bittersweet…
CHAPTER 6
As true love often does, when one of the pairing passes away, the other gives up soon after. This one was hardly a month. Much of the crew and passengers had been on the ground, but the elders were a sheltered lot, not expected to teleport for six more months. She was close enough and she was tired. Too tired.
She wrote a letter by hand to be found on her desk, on top of her and Jack’ wills, expressing her love to Brandon, and her thanks to all who made her life so full. She formally requested that her own and Jack’s ashes both be buried on Earth, comingled forever.
Then she lay down on her pairing bed, pulled her ‘magic’ sheet up to her chin, dreaming of those younger days with her Jack, and went to sleep.
A sleep from which she never awoke…
CHAPTER 7
The planet was a pleasant surprise. Of course, at first, the people were more than a little afraid. They discovered the moon was devoid of human life, in fact, any sign that anyone had ever been there. No habitats, titanium steel or anything else. Nothing but bare rock and sand. Only the remnants of an American flag, sans pole, lying forlornly in the dust, placed there in the twentieth century in man’s first venture to another rock.
This was a strong indicator that the vicious Zephroan or their kin had found this solar system. Though, supposedly few people lived here at all, metal was as common as dust in billions of Cyborgs. And, perhaps these robots were mere fodder for the Zephroan. The surface was intact, but indicated severe burning in large swaths, just as Colliestown had endured on Renewal. Some of the undergrowth had already grown back since the attack.
The only hope now was that Resolute had taken out the scouts and no other Zephroan would even know where to look for Earth.
There were billions of animal life forms as would be expected in an opportune environment.
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