The Long Road to Gaia

by Timothy Ellis

  I returned to where Twelve waited for me.

  "Interesting."

  "Yes. And necessary, so don’t screw with it."

  "What do I need to do here then?"

  He told me.

  Three

  I returned to where the three great explorer ships were proposed. I ignored Galactica, since I already knew she survived long enough to provide prophesy for when it was needed, and in the form required by One. Following her was unnecessary, since I already knew what she had done up until this time, and was blocked from anything in her future from there.

  I followed Prometheus to see what would happen to her. She left Earth system faster than Galactica had, with the first set of recommended updates sent back by her sister ship. She moved down the arm in the opposite direction to Galactica.

  Her scout ships explored one system to each side of her down spine course, sending back information for the third ship still being built.

  Long years later, she arrived at the first of the spine systems which seemed to have many systems beyond them. The scouts were faster now, and they were able to map two jumps on, before Prometheus jumped further down the spine again. Nations looking towards distant empires, greedily divided up the core systems amongst themselves, gambling on how many systems there might be beyond them. Russia, Japan, China, and India, all sent colony ships to their new worlds, with newer Scout designs to explore their space with. None of them were disappointed.

  Prometheus was long gone down the spine when the first colony ships arrived.

  More long years later, she down jumped into a system which almost proved fatal, as an asteroid field filled the system.

  At the last second before she hit the giant asteroid in the down jump lane, I pushed both the ship and roid apart, long enough for the helmsman to react and pull her upwards.

  "Nicely done," said Twelve.

  "Thanks."

  "You won't thank me soon."

  "Why not?"

  "You'll see."

  Three systems on, Prometheus down jumped into a system with a pulsar. The shields protected them for just long enough to become aware they were in trouble, but the entire crew died before they could even change the ship's course.

  "You knew?" I asked Twelve.

  "Of course."

  "That's cold."

  "Necessary."

  "You sound like One."

  "Let's not descend to insults please."

  "I assume I can't follow the ship to see what happens to her?"

  "Correct. You need to delete prophesy completely this time."

  I did so, also trying to see what I could of the future from her databanks. I might as well not have tried. The data was there, but I couldn’t retrieve it. I didn’t need Twelve saying anything to me, so I simply returned to the launch time for Enterprise.

  Like Prometheus, I followed Enterprise to see what happened to her. If she was destroyed, I wouldn’t need to do anything.

  Her launch was uneventful, and with the second set of upgrades since Galactica left, she headed after Prometheus, but instead of heading down spine, she started exploring off to the sides of her path. What later became the French sector led her to the Sirius system, but they wisely decided not to go too far in. A system with two suns in orbit around each other was deemed too dangerous to search properly, with the current level of technology. The ship backtracked, going on to chart the areas which became the Spanish sector, Italian sector, and Portuguese mini-sector, before heading back to Earth.

  After a refit, she left up spine, and on the other side of Earth, she charted what was to become the Corporate sector, and expanded the known systems beyond the systems already settled by the Arab states, on both sides of Barnard's Star.

  She returned home once again, receiving a major overhaul and upgrade, before setting out once again for Sirius, the only unexplored system left around Earth as far as anyone knew at that time.

  I watched the ship as it headed into an area of instability they could not see, or understand if they did. In spite of its upgrade, Enterprise was not shielded well enough to withstand the sheer effects.

  "No," said Twelve, as I was about to do something to help them.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "The most you can do is suggest they turn around before it's too late."

  I did so, whispering into the ear of the Captain. The ship turned immediately for the jump point, but I could already see it was too late for her. They weren't going to make it.

  I said as much to Twelve.

  "Then you need to ensure they do make it."

  I looked at him in shock.

  "You let them go in there. You stopped me from helping them. Now you tell me to make sure they survive?"

  "Yes. They are allowed to make it as far as the next habitable planet, where they must abandon the ship in orbit."

  "Why?"

  "It will be needed again, one day."

  I tried to move forward along this line, and was blocked.

  "Do what you have to, Thirteen. But only that, nothing more. These people must survive, but not thrive."

  "Don’t they deserve better than that?"

  "Maybe so, but their destiny is already foreseen."

  "One?"

  "As always, yes. She has seen all variations. This must be."

  I ensured Enterprise reached the next star system, and made sure the ship was evacuated as fast as possible, and remained in a stable orbit. Its future remained blocked to me.

  Knowing the ship was to survive, I made sure the databases didn’t contain anything at all about prophesy, before ensuring all power on the ship was lost. I didn’t even bother to try and extract anything this time.

  Four

  "Now what?" I asked.

  "Now you continue to follow Galactica," answered One.

  "For how long?"

  "For as long as it takes."

  I looked at her, my face indicating how inadequate I thought that answer was.

  She laughed.

  2360

  One

  Lieutenant (JG) Jon Hunter piloted the scout ship off the front of the right flight pod.

  Galactica had long had a set way of exploring a system. A scout ship jumped in first to make sure it was safe for the Explorer ship to come through. Once she had, more scout ships were sent to find the planetary bodies, while Galactica made a circuit outside the Oort cloud, looking for jump points. By the time she had made a complete circuit, and was ready to proceed to where they thought the next logical jump should be from, the scouts would be on their way back. If they found a habitable planet, or one which might be terraformed easily, Galactica went there, and the planet would be surveyed. Then move on to the next jump, and send in the first scout again. This could take anything from weeks, to months, or even more than a year. It depended entirely on what they found.

  This was Jon's first mission in charge of a first jump. He was excited, and honoured to be given the responsibility. But he was also acutely aware he was in charge of other lives. And the nightmare he'd had the previous night was still on his mind.

  He ran the checklist by the book, and made sure the others had as well. The check in call to Galactica before jumping showed his excitement, but also his commitment to the mission, and his wanting to justify his Captain-father's faith in him.

  The scout ship jumped.

  "Woah!" said Twelve. "That is sheer rotten luck!"

  "It's only rotten luck if it couldn’t be prevented," I said.

  "This couldn’t."

  "Yes it could. It just needed one of us to check the jump first."

  "What are we? Nursemaids?"

  "Feels like it to me."

  "Well we're not. As it happens I did check it."

  I looked at him in shock. The longer I was locked into this job, the less I liked my supposed supervisor.

  The system Galactica was in was empty. There was nothing but a sun, with not even a stray asteroid out at Oort distance.

  On th
e other hand, the scout ship had down jumped strait into a rogue planetoid, which was on a strange elliptical orbit. It was incredible bad luck, that on the only day in its orbit it was in a position to threaten a ship jumping in, a ship had jumped in.

  They waited a week before sending another scout ship. This was necessitated by the need to not repeat whatever had happened to put the scout ship out of touch, or unable to return. Wait a while so conditions change. Also wait a while in case it was one of those mundane breakdown sort of reasons why they didn’t jump back on time. The scout ships were supplied for several weeks, so unless something catastrophic happened, they would be fine even if they couldn’t return.

  The wreckage was found on the side of the planetoid facing the jump point. There had been no chance of survivors, even if someone had successfully jumped in shortly after the first one.

  The rock was called 'Bad Wolf' by someone in the crew, and the name stuck.

  Before they left, Galactica made an effort to change the orbit of the planetoid, so it wouldn’t get so close to the jump point ever again. Later on, when the tech to move it safely came along, it would be moved even further off its original orbit.

  "Are you sure you don’t want me to do anything?" I asked Twelve.

  "No. His kid brother will carry on the family line."

  "What a waste," I said. "Potentially good lad I thought."

  "That’s the way it goes."

  I pondered that.

  It was increasingly obvious that people meant nothing to the others. All they cared about was preserving the bloodline to generate the one person they wanted.

  Maybe that meant I'd changed. Somewhere along this road, I'd started to care more about humans.

  I pondered that too.

  Two

  The Hunter family were still in mourning when Galactica jumped into the next system. George Hunter was a man torn in half. He'd lost his oldest son, but he had a job to do. The stress was killing him, and finding something really unusual wasn’t what he'd been hoping for. He'd been Captain for a long time, and all he knew was this ship, and the handful of planets he'd been able to get down to for a few days each. Losing his son was the straw that was breaking him.

  "The journey is almost done," I whispered to him. "Hang in there."

  They found something unexpected. Two jump points were showing without anyone searching for them, and neither of them were in the usual orientation, in or around the Oort cloud of the system. It had never happened before.

  "We're here," announced a voice from the rear of the bridge.

  George startled. He hadn't heard this voice before. He looked around, preparing to yell at whoever it was to get off his bridge, but the words died in his mouth when he saw who it was.

  The Keeper walked slowly up to him.

  "We're here," he said again.

  "Where?" George couldn’t help but ask.

  "Where prophesy begins."

  "Prophesy?"

  George started going red in the face.

  "Who cares about your stupid prophesy? Where was prophesy when my son died!"

  The Keeper looked at the grief stricken man desperate to hold on to his professional sanity.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "There is a Jon Hunter mentioned in prophesy, but he hasn’t been born yet."

  He raised his hand to stop the outburst he knew was coming from George.

  "Until we arrived here, prophesy was undefined in terms of when. It still is, but we are now here, and it is only a matter of time now."

  "Damn your prophesy. Get off my Bridge!"

  The Keeper smiled sadly, and withdrew.

  George raked his eyes around the Bridge, and everyone went back to work.

  The scouts launched. George Hunter chose a jump point, and headed Galactica towards it. While the scouts were still checking out the gas giants, Galactica found another jump point.

  The days passed into weeks, and Galactica found a total of nine jump points. All of them were in a ring outside the system itself, which was little more than asteroids in ring formations. No habitable planet was found, the moons around the two gas giants being giant rocks with zero capability of ever generating an atmosphere.

  The weeks passed into months, as they explored each system and found several more. Against all the odds, in each system except one, they found a Terran class planet, very close to old Earth. All but one of them was capable of supporting a billion or so people without upsetting the balance with nature. The only one which couldn’t, was predominantly oceans, with land mass occurring as islands instead of continents. All the same, it could handle several hundred million. On the last planet, they found nothing but ice.

  Each time George started to point Galactica to one particular jump point, I'd whisper to him to leave that one for last. Eventually it was the last.

  Galactica jumped in.

  "Please let this be the end of the Galaxy," said George to himself.

  He got his wish.

  The planet was harsh, with the few oasis of ideal living places scattered around the planet. At most, the planet would support fifty thousand people. The rest of the system was nothing special.

  "Bingo," thought George, and called a meeting of the heads of the spiritual groups still on board.

  Within a week, all of the spiritual groups had camps down on the planet.

  Three

  "Galactica has come to the end of the galactic arm," said Captain George Hunter into a vid. "The final planet along the spine has been named Outback, and settled by a number of spiritual groups who seek isolation. It has nothing anyone else wants, and they only wish to be forgotten now by the rest of humanity. They are sending out messages to their own groups, inviting them to join them here. However, the planet simply will not support very many people, so please don’t send anyone here who isn’t on the welcome list."

  He paused for breath.

  "The good news is, Outback can be left in peace, because we discovered a system with nine jump points, beyond which are dreams made of."

  He grinned at the cam.

  "I hereby claim this area of space for anyone of Australian ancestry. There are nine Earth type planets here, so let the word go forth that the sons of Australia have found their promised land, and those Australians who settled elsewhere and are not happy, are welcome to move here. To those Australians still in the Earth system waiting for us to announce having found the new Australia, I say it is found. Bring as many colony kits as you can organize, and come join us."

  "Galactica was funded by Australians, Americans, British, and Canadians; and some spiritual groups like the Malaysian Buddhists. The Americans claimed their space, the Canadians claimed next door, and the British next door to them, spatially speaking. The dreamers, the science fiction types, and those wanting to live a weird themed life, all claimed their own space, leaving just the Australians and the special spiritual groups left aboard Galactica. The spirituals claim Outback, and we Australians claim this last area on the tip of this arm of the galaxy."

  "To governments everywhere, the new government of the area of Australia greets you. Our space begins with a system we have called "Bad Wolf", recognizable for the rogue planetoid which flybys the jump points. Beyond this system, travelers will be bound by Australian law. All are welcome to emigrate here, as long as they abide by our rules, and they leave Outback alone."

  He looked serious for a moment.

  "Galactica's mission is complete. Its new function is to police our new home. Please don’t try us. This is our space now, as others have claimed their chunk of space before us."

  He smiled again.

  "George Hunter, Captain of Galactica, out."

  He turned the cam off, and leaned back in his chair. Not one of his better speeches he knew, but it would do.

  He played it again, nodded, and sent it. To everyone who mattered, the length of the spine.

  The months went by, as Galactica dropped people off on each habitable world, except the ice one. Although
she had been equipped to create a single colony at a time, those on board committed to colonizing, decided to create small colonies on all the planets as fast as possible, in order to validate the claims for them when others arrived. The colony kit didn’t go far for each world, but they managed. Full kits were coming for each of them, colony ships departing Earth within days of the announcement reaching there. The 'we are coming' messages poured in for weeks after the announcement.

  By the time the first colony ship arrived, aptly named 'Botany Bay', and landed on the planet already named Sydney, an Australian area government was already holding meetings, using one of the scout ships as a courier. A Sydney government was quickly established.

  Within six months, all the habitable planets had received multiple colony ships, and had all established planetary governments.

  Galactica sat in the middle of the central system, unofficially called Nexus. Her scout ships were being retrofitted to act as police ships. All but a handful.

  George had plans still. There was still life in the old girl, and there were plenty of unexplored jump points back the way they had come. As soon as the two stations arrived, he intended to go back to exploring. In spite of the pest of a Keeper who kept insisting there was one last find here.

  Another month passed, and the station kit for Sydney arrived. A few weeks later, the much smaller kit arrived for Outback. Galactica jumped after it, intending to see Outback taken care of, before they left the area, possibly for good.

  While the station took shape, George prepared his crew for a new mission. Those remaining on Galactica were asked to commit to it.

  The Keepers refused, insisting destiny had other plans for them. George laughed at them. It was a thin grief covered laugh which tended to freak people out, but he didn’t care. Not even his wife knew he was secretly planning on finding a way to join his son. I kept whispering to him, trying to keep him from actually self-destructing.

  He knew his job though, and he did it. He opened the new Outback orbital station, and became its second customer. The first was an Earth side freighter with supplies for Galactica, which offloaded onto the station. The station processed the containers and pallets, getting the kinks out of its cargo systems, before the same containers and pallets were shuttled aboard Galactica. The freighter left before Galactica was ready.