Cygnus Rising: Humanity Returns to Space (Cygnus Space Opera Book 1)

by Craig Martelle

  “Oh my! I do apologize. How did you climb the stairs, then? I don’t think I want to know. You should have said something. Don’t put your lives at risk for something like this!” the commander apologized. “But since you’re here, I’d like you two to deliver our message to our fellow Earthers. And yes, we found some, right here on the fifth planet. I’m afraid that we would probably not make a good impression by using my face in our video. We might scare them away. You two look…. How do I say this without being offensive? You look human, wholesome, happy. If we have to put a good face on all that Vii stands for, you two are it.”

  Cain and Ellie were flattered, but didn’t want anyone to think that they represented all of Vii. They were young and the real leaders of the expedition were older, wiser, and more intelligent. So what if they were other species? “I think we should include all the species, give them a taste of who we really are,” Cain suggested.

  “Eventually, Ensign. Eventually. Their message suggests that this society is one hundred percent human. Now, I’ve worked up a short script. Tell me what you think.” Cain and Ellie read the message. It was generic, only vaguely discussing where they’d come from and implying that the crew was diverse without going into detail regarding the true nature of the intelligent species of Vii and how they’d been genetically engineered using DNA spliced from humans until they evolved on their own and became equal with their forebears.

  It was a message saying that a spaceship was hurtling toward their planet, with multiple claims that the Cygnus-12 came in peace. “Don’t want to frighten the natives!” the Tortoid kept saying.

  Cain and Ellie took a position standing on the rear portholes, formerly the aft bulkhead and currently the deck, where a limited amount of equipment was shown, just enough to convince any listener that the newcomers were on a spaceship. The young couple smiled at the point of light next to the pinpoint camera contained in all the terminals and read their lines, convincingly and naturally, finishing with a request that the receivers reply once they heard the message, since it would take a while to slow the ship if a meeting were to be arranged.

  The commander broadcast the message to everyone in the ship, giving them time to comment so the message could be improved. It was short and generic, so no one had any comments. It set the tone that the commander wanted in his first message–peaceful explorers, human just like you.

  “Send the message, Jolly, maximum power to the emitter, repeat it for the next twelve hours as we continue down the well. And you two,” Master Daksha said, nodding to Cain and Ellie with his Tortoid head, “just stay here until we restore the spin. We don’t need any more acrobatics. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that when I asked you to come here...”

  Fellow Humans – The Decision

  During the eleventh hour after the ship started broadcasting its message, they received a reply.

  “Fellow humans! We greet you from the planet Concordia, the fifth planet in the system known as IC1396, but to us, it is Solar Two. We landed here a millennium ago in escape pods as our colony ship came apart. Debris is scattered along a path fifty light years long, little bits here and there as the ship traveled on a ballistic trajectory through interstellar space. At least this planet appeared to us while life remained. The survivors launched with what they could fit in the shuttles and traveled for nine months, arriving here with no food, no water, and little power. The crash landings claimed more lives and with few people and little technology, we’ve built what we have today, enough to send a signal into space but not enough to go there ourselves. We’re transmitting maps of our world and the coordinates of a landing site in a separate data stream that will follow this message,” a middle-aged man stated, enunciating clearly through a heavy accent. Behind him was a plain wall.

  Daksha blinked slowly as he contemplated the message. He watched it four more times, slowing it down occasionally to study the man’s facial expressions.

  “What do you think?” he asked. The captain was twisted into a knot thinking about conspiracies, but didn’t want to express his concerns in front of the crew. As they found out from Cain and Ellie’s earlier adventure from their workspaces, he was trapped on the command deck until they returned the ship’s spin. The crew needed to move around as some should be off shift and others on, while the rest had duties to accomplish in multiple spaces on multiple decks.

  “Prepare for artificial gravity to be restored,” the captain called to all crew, giving people time to think before answering the commander’s question. Jolly confirmed that the crew had checked in and were ready, some very vocal about being ready as the toilets weren’t completely accessible in the ship’s current mode of gravity generation.

  The ship started to spin, slowly at first, then sped up, flying through space like an old time projectile.

  Master Daksha had the infinite patience of a Tortoid, but he knew he needed the other’s input as he was blind to alternative courses of action. He wanted desperately to make contact with the refugees from Earth, meet them, hear their story, and tell them of Vii’s successes.

  Cain and Ellie made to leave, hoping to return to their workstations. The commander swam in front of them. “Ideas?” he asked.

  Ellie put her hand on Cain’s arm. She wanted to say something, not seeking his approval but letting him know she wanted to speak first. “Isn’t this why we’re out here, Master Daksha, to find a way back to Earth? But now that we’ve found other humans, we have to meet with them. Maybe this is our whole journey. We spend time with them, restock our supplies, turn this into a hub from which we launch further toward Earth. Can you imagine? Earth is within our reach. Two more jumps, logistically. It was a problem, until now. The EM drive lets us explore and look what we’ve found! I came to space for exactly this. It would be disappointing to fly past without stopping to say hello.”

  Everyone on the command deck looked at her. She and Cain had been passing the time with Stinky during their sequestration due to the prohibition of using the stairs. Black Leaper was still reeling from the loss of the only other Wolfoid on the spaceship. They were trying to cheer him up, but Ellie’s answer to Master Daksha’s question broke him from his reverie.

  “Yes!” he said through his vocalization device, probably more loudly than intended. “If we don’t, then what was Strider’s death for? I think we have to.” He ended with a resounding yip and bark, his device translating those exclamations as a flat-sounding “oorah.”

  “How do we protect ourselves?” the captain asked. “What if it’s a trick?”

  “Then those who go down in the shuttle will have a hard time. Issue the blasters and set up a reporting protocol. If we lose contact, then we’ll move to an alternate location and launch the second shuttle. If we lose that one, we leave. The ship is life, save the ship,” Master Daksha intoned.

  “But when we return, we’ll bring reinforcements and lots of blasters. If they mess with us, we’ll make them pay,” the captain said, as if it had already happened. The others looked at him oddly.

  “What if they just want to shake our hands?” Ellie asked innocently.

  “Then we’ll do that, those of us with hands of course!” the commander swam in a circle, showing his thick legs and blinking rapidly as he bobbed his head laughing. The crew’s morale was high, too. There was nothing like the first discovery of life outside Cygnus to buoy the spirits of the deep space explorers.

  Cain and Ellie excused themselves. No one else offered input to the commander as those who spoke mirrored his own thoughts. The captain’s concerns were appropriate and would be addressed with procedures, a landing SOP for contact with other humans.

  The SES had contemplated meeting aliens, but nothing more. The previous space missions weren’t equipped to land on a planet. Cygnus-12 would get to write the book, because contact was imminent and they had everything they needed to get up close and personal with the Concordians.

  “Captain, put us into the neutral point between Concordia and its m
oon. I will take the team to the planet in shuttle one. I would like a cross-section of Vii to show the flag, as it may be. Cain and Ellie, their ‘cats, Leaper, Chirit, and Senior Lieutenant Pace. We’ll need you, too, Jolly! Make sure your link through the shuttle is secure so we don’t lose contact. We don’t want to be left behind,” the commander said as he started his planning. He swam close to Ensign Peekaless and started narrating the details of the Landing SOP, as he decided to call it.

  “And you’re coming, too, Pickles,” he said affectionately, using the Lizard Man’s nickname.

  A New World and New Life

  ‘Get your collars and meet us outside the garden deck, we’re going to the planet!’ Cain told Lutheann using his thought voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I heard you right. You’re saying that we’re leaving the ship now to go home?’

  ‘No,’ Cain patiently explained, knowing that all the ‘cats were listening in. Mixial was crushed at not getting to leave, but her human was remaining on board. ‘We’re still over twelve hundred light years from home. This is a new planet, Concordia, where humans crash-landed a thousand years ago, around the same time that our ancestors landed on Vii. They sound like they could use some help, so we’re going to let them know that they aren’t alone. And we need you two miscreants to keep us safe, just in case anyone has misguided intentions.’

  ‘What if these miscreants don’t feel like going?’ Carnesto countered.

  ‘Sure. Try that and see if you can return to the ‘cat nation. I know how things work. ‘Cats can’t lie to ‘cats. They’ll know you abandoned us, but if that’s how you want it, I’m sure we can arrange for the Rabbits to get their laser pistols back. Now, just meet us in the corridor!’

  ‘Fine,’ Lutheann said, but her thought voice sounded pleased. The ‘cats really hated being trapped on board and any opportunity to get off was a good one, in their minds.

  Ellie and Cain ran down the corridor like kids heading for recess. The ‘cats met them as they continued down the stairwell to the hangar deck where they met the others. Master Daksha floated serenely, but he blinked rapidly, betraying his excitement. Senior Lieutenant Pace was a young man, though still much older than Cain or Ellie. He’d made three cruises with the commander and was a stalwart companion. His knowledge of computers helped better integrate some of the key systems with Jolly. People assumed that Jolly took over any and all computerized systems, but some of it needed to be tweaked and the rest of it needed significant input. Pace filled the void.

  Leaper was there, wearing his harness and carrying a spear, not a lightning spear like the Wolfoids usually carried but a plain carbon fiber one that the industrial fabricator had produced. The system was restricted from producing weaponry, more SES logic. They could carry weapons, but they couldn’t produce more.

  Cain and Ellie carried blasters, as did Pace and Pickles. The Lizard Man wore his skin suit that kept his skin from drying out whenever he wasn’t in a rainforest-type environment. He had a special shower in his quarters that misted water over him while he rested, which was the only time he was out of his skin suit. The Lizard Man was an imposing figure, standing a head taller than the humans, with a deep, heavily-muscled chest and fangs for ripping his food. The fact that Pickles was an academic, non-violent, and most comfortable behind a computer was beside the point.

  Chirit was flying around the hangar deck, enjoying the space to spread his wings. He had no chance to do that while working sensors, but he wasn’t there for his wings. His Hawkoid eyes missed nothing and his ears were nearly as keen. He was a gifted sensor operator and had been mentoring Tandry during the voyage to bring her up to speed.

  Without further delay, they loaded into the shuttle, secured themselves, and waited for word from the captain as Jolly executed the intricate maneuvers necessary to find and stop at the neutral point, that small area of space where the gravitational forces between the planet and its moon were in balance. There were four neutral points around planets with a single moon. The spaceship was flying backwards, using the EM drive to slow their momentum and the thrusters to adjust alignment. The ship continued to spin despite some bouts of nausea within the crew. The alternative, as they discovered, was complete immobilization. The med bots whipped up a concoction and delivered it, by species, to limit the effects of the artificial gravity.

  The shuttle was a modified rocket with stubby wings sitting on top of a pair of oxygen/hydrogen engines. The shuttle only had enough fuel for one flight. It was self-sufficient in that it could recharge its own tanks once on the planet. In space, it had to be manually recharged. It was a tight squeeze on the inside. Pace took the pilot’s seat and Ellie moved into the co-pilot’s. Daksha wedged in between them, getting a strap thrown over his shell to hold him in place during the violence of entering the planet’s atmosphere.

  The Wolfoid squatted across two of the four side-seats. Cain and Pickles sat in the other two, while Chirit laid across their laps, protecting his tail feathers and wings. One Hillcat wedged herself under Cain’s legs while a second was in front, sharing Ellie’s seat with her. It was universal--no one was comfortable.

  The commander and six crew members were the first ever from Cygnus VII to make contact with aliens, even if the aliens were human. The Cygnus-12 was making history.

  “It won’t do to scratch the paint on our way, would it, Commander?” Pace asked of Daksha, hoping to lighten the mood.

  The ship rolled along the rails supporting it until it came to the hatch. The hangar bay had been cleared and vented. They waited for the red light to start flashing, showing that they were preparing to open the hangar bay. When the light flashed, the hatch folded away and the shuttle’s crew looked into open space. Pace touched the thruster and it jumped the shuttle through the door. He carefully maneuvered away from the Cygnus-12 and turned the nose toward the planet.

  “I hope they have something fresh to eat. Nothing like a big banquet, eh, Commander?” Pace chuckled as he eased the ship at a shallow angle toward the planet. He checked his entry vector and adjusted the course to fly toward the coordinates provided. They’d circle the planet twice before descending below the perpetual cloud cover and into the lower atmosphere, touching down on their tail, exiting via the aft ladder and slide.

  The entry was rough as the shuttle skipped and dove. The nose heated, bathing the windshield in a dark orange glow as they continued downward. Pace struggled to keep the nose up to prevent the ship from diving too harshly. They rocked back and forth. Lutheann was stepped on and let out an angry yowl. The inside of the shuttle got hot. The humans sweated profusely, while Daksha and Pickles seemed right at home. The ‘cats started whining hideously. Chirit looked at Cain and shook his head.

  “I’m not really enjoying this part,” Cain told nobody in particular. Ellie laughed and tried to reposition herself as far from the heat and fur of the ‘cat as she could get, which was about a quarter of an inch. She shook her head, sympathizing with Cain.

  Suddenly, the buffeting stopped and the ship’s flight smoothed. A couple bounces through the clouds and a broad landscape appeared before them. The crew craned their necks to get a look at life on another planet. They passed over rolling countryside, green in the valleys, white on the mountains, the blue of water in rivers and lakes, the gray sky overhead.

  The ship continued on course toward the landing coordinates provided by the people of Concordia. Jolly had chosen an overland route, as opposed to a flight path that would have taken them over a great ocean. They passed a great city between two rivers, an advanced city of gleaming metal and glass.

  Vii had nothing that compared with the magnificence they saw. If a group of humans arrived on Concordia with nothing but the clothes on their backs in shuttles that were failing, how could they build such extravagance? Maybe they never had a civil war that set progress so far behind.

  Then how could they not have any space travel?

  “I’m not sure our hosts were completely honest
with us,” Cain said what the others were thinking.

  ‘Jolly, are you seeing this city?’

  ‘Yes. That’s not the only surprise. There are two small spacecraft headed toward the Cygnus-12 at this time. They appeared shortly after your shuttle penetrated the atmosphere.’

  ‘Captain Rand? Whoever is on those shuttles cannot get aboard the Cygnus-12. Do what you have to do to save the ship, even if you have to leave. We can’t get back right now. We’ll land and recharge the engines, then we’ll meet you at the alternate neutral point,’ Daksha shared with all of them via the neural implant.

  ‘I’m afraid they have us boxed in. We’ll take care of things first and then we’ll move the ship. Good luck, Commander,’ the captain said, sadness in his voice.

  “Good luck, Captain,” the Tortoid said through his vocalization device, looking at the landscape beyond the shuttles windows, unblinking as he tried to think of a way forward that didn’t involve fighting the people of Concordia.

  “Things just got a whole lot more interesting,” Pace said, caressing the blaster at his hip.

  Prepare to Repel Boarders

  “Jolly! We need something to hold them off. We have two shuttles approaching from opposite sides. We have four airlocks. If we disable them, what kind of damage can they do to the ship?”

  “If they’re wearing space suits, they can use a cutting torch to breach the hatches. If we vent to space, that helps them, not us,” Jolly answered.

  “But we have to be ready. Activate the intercom, please.” The captain hesitated for a moment then spoke clearly, “As you all know, we have probably hostile forces inbound. Put on your suits and prepare for zero-g and no atmosphere. The weapons locker is open. Gentlemen, go get your laser pistols and prepare to use them. We have a fight coming and we can’t afford to lose, otherwise we condemn Master Daksha and the others on the planet surface. If we are not in place when they leave the planet, they’ll die in the cold of space.