CHAPTER 8
Aboard the Emissary, Five Weeks Later
When Alan Jacobs was asked to take command of the Emissary on its mission to Proxima b, he readily agreed. It was the only time in his military career that he was asked if he wanted a particular job instead of simply being ordered to take it. He had been laser-focused on taking the next ship to the stars since he’d learned about the capabilities of the Samara Drive and visited the Samaritan before it left the Sol system in search of the saboteur who tried to get that ship lost in space. He got his wish. He had cut his teeth flying the old nuclear thermal rockets that were limited to speed far less than the speed of light, and now he commanded one that came close to nature’s ultimate speed limit, that of light itself. Times had certainly changed. Being widowed and having seniority, with over twenty years in the Space Force, he had topped out as a full-bird colonel. There wasn’t much left to his career; he didn’t believe himself to be brigadier general promotable. Or at least he hadn’t until the offer to go on the Emissary as the ship’s captain. Jacobs had jumped at the opportunity. Of course, had his wife not died in a tragic ski accident five years previously to him taking the deep space missions to the outer Sol planets, his answer might have been quite different. But that was a different life. He was here. Now. He had been promoted to a one-star. He was captain of a starship. He was now on his way to whatever might await them at Luyten b.
They couldn’t travel as fast as the radio message sent to Luyten b by the renegade Atlantean, but they wouldn’t be too far behind it when they arrived. Relativistic time made things complicated, but for the crew of the ship who would be traveling at close to the speed of light and have their clocks slowed, it was complicated in a good way. The time they spent traveling would be a good deal less than that which would pass on Earth and Proxima b.
Drs. Gilster and Vulpetti had been over their calculations many times and members of an independent team confirmed them. Luyten b was both the source of the message beamed toward Proxima b and the destination of the message sent by the murderous Atlantean. Now they were on their way to find out what was there.
Operating the Samara Drive in the Proxima b system was much less complicated than back at Sol. Emissary and Samaritan were the only two ships in interplanetary space and therefore the risk of the Samara Drive’s UV exhaust roasting an errant ship was zero. They only had to make sure that the beam didn’t have line of sight with Proxima b until they were sufficiently far away for the beam’s divergence to make it harmless.
They were now accelerating at one-half gee and enjoying not having to deal with zero or microgravity, which was, as far as Jacobs was concerned, the one and only drawback of spaceflight. He’d never quite gotten over experiencing nausea every time they were in free fall, despite spending over twenty years in space. It was only by his force of self-control that it did not become an impediment to his career. He simply willed himself to not get sick and that sort of worked. Enough to prevent him from vomiting, but not enough to keep him from being miserable every time the acceleration went to zero.
That said, he could grasp what happened to his body in zero gravity conditions. Cardiovascular deconditioning, fluid redistribution, and all the physiological changes he and most people were easy to understand. There were correlations in their everyday lives that people could draw upon to make sense of it. It was the relativity that he still had trouble with. Both ships had experienced its effects on the journey from Earth to Proxima Centauri, the Emissary more so than the Samaritan due to its faster speed. Improvements in the Samara Drive over the brief time between each ship’s launch had made a dramatic difference in the travel time from the points of view of both the crew and those folks back at home.
That voyage made the trip he and his crew were now embarking upon seem easy, almost trivial. Given the time they would need to accelerate to more than ninety-eight percent of light speed, those at Proxima b, and Earth—if they even knew the trip was happening—would require just over eighteen years to cover that approximately sixteen light-year distance between here and Luyten’s Star. From his perspective, and that of the rest of the Emissary’s crew, however, the trip would take a mere five or so years. There would be nearly a year of acceleration to 0.98c. Then there would be three years of cruising at max speed. And that would be followed by a year of deceleration for system arrival. Finding where to enter and what planets to approach might take several more months. Most of that time they would spend in the cryobeds. Commensurate with the improvement of the Samara Drive had also come improvements in cryobed technology that now allowed the aging process to slow while they were asleep. Instead of sleeping away six years of life, their bodies would only age approximately one year for every ten they spent in the cryobed. Taken together, the human race was now a truly interstellar species and Jacobs couldn’t help but wonder what additional advances had occurred after they left Earth. Would they arrive at Luyten’s Star and find another Earth ship already there?
His crew was now a mix of those from both the Emissary and the Samaritan, with a few Fintidierians thrown in for good measure. Of the latter, Jacobs really enjoyed the company of Mr. Bob. He had learned more of Fintidierian history and culture in their mealtime conversations than from the official Proximan Encyclopedia his people had shared with those from Earth, who were now known as “Terrans” or “Earthers” by most Fintidierians. The latter term was catching on among the Terrans as well. It was far simpler to say than “Earth humans” and conveyed a retro feel to all involved that was somehow fun.
Mr. Bob had talked him through his life and explained how he and his cohorts reacted to the fertility crisis as well as the news that Terrans existed—and were coming to visit. Apparently, and unbeknownst to those traveling from Earth to Proxima b, the culture there was on the verge of mass suicide. Literally. The government had plans to mass-distribute cyanide pills to any who wanted to die and avoid the coming societal collapse, and the misery and despair that would accompany it. Surveys indicated that more than eighty percent of the planet’s population was considering that option up until the radio messages from Earth were made public. That’s when hope reemerged and the plans for euthanization were scrapped. Unfortunately, given that Terran medicine had not yet found the cause or the cure of the fertility crisis, the doomsday sentiment among some was again gaining traction. Jacobs suspected the whole thing would be resolved, one way or the other, by the time they awakened at the end of their journey.
Some of the passengers were entering the cryobeds directly while most of the crew was still awake and making sure the ship was performing as it should. The ship’s computers were considered reliable enough to not require Jacobs and his crew to awaken more than once during the journey, to “check on things.” Even knowing that complex systems sometimes fail, Jacobs was not that concerned. He knew his ship and believed to the core of his being that it would not let them down during the long trip. If it did, well, he would probably not wake up and would never know.
“Captain Jacobs, we’ve got an estimate on how long it will take to reconfigure the reconnaissance probes. CHENG says they’ll need another two days, tops,” Lieutenant Marcus Keaton, the Emissary’s newly minted weapons officer, explained.
Though the crew of the Emissary was mostly members of the Space Force, it was essentially still a ship of peaceful exploration, not a warship. Built generally along the same design specifications as the Samaritan, but with an improved Samara Drive, it was never envisioned that the ship would need to carry any sort of armament. Apparently, none of the utopian scientists and engineers back in the Sol system recalled any of the science fiction movies from humanity’s past and had left their home system completely unprepared for what dangers might actually be out in the depths of space. Jacobs saw as extremely ironic that a ship run by the United States Space Force for the most part had very little in the way of weapons built in. That was, of course, not including the Samara Drive itself, and the five nuclear devices stowed away in the ship for safekeeping that only he, the CHENG, and his XO (executive officer) knew about.
The ship did have an armory, but that was to equip the USSF Spec Ops security and landing teams as well as the SEALs for use on any planetside excursions. While adding some sort of weapons system to the ship was discussed, briefly, before departure from Earth, it was determined that adding such systems to the nearly completed ship would cause its launch to slip nearly two years. Given the urgency of sending additional medical personnel to Proxima b, and that the Proximans appeared to be far behind Earth in terms of technology, the political leadership decided to not wait and send the ship out as is. At the time Jacobs hadn’t disagreed with the decision simply because at that time there was never any thought of going to other, potentially hostile worlds. He was now regretting that decision and working to see if there was anything they could do to give the ship some teeth. The Atlantean they had encountered was anything but friendly and certainly their technological peer or, worst case, their superior.
It was Lieutenant Marcus Keaton’s idea to modify the ship’s reconnaissance probes to be kinetic energy weapons. Each probe was a smaller version of the unmanned Interstellarerforscher robotic scout ship that had led the Samaritan to Proxima Centauri after that ship’s Pulsar Interstellar Navigation System, or PINS, had failed and nearly left them adrift between the stars. Originally designed to do the same thing as the Interstellarerforscher—carry scientific instruments to survey a region of space and report back to the Emissary what was found—each probe massed nearly two hundred kilograms and carried its own scientific instruments, a microfusion power plant, and a small, but very capable Samara Drive to propel it at nearly the speed of light on its journey. It was the combination of speed and mass that inspired Keaton to suggest it as a weapon. Capable of accelerating at twenty gees to more than ninety-five percent the speed of light, each probe could have the explosive force equivalent of more than one million Hiroshima bombs. That was more than enough energy to destroy a spaceship, likely enough to obliterate a small moon. There was one drawback: to reach 0.95c, it would have to accelerate for over sixteen days. In a combat situation, they might need to use them in situations with flight times considerably less than that, perhaps as short as seconds or minutes. Even then, a two-hundred-kilogram chunk hitting something after accelerating only ten seconds would reach a speed of four kilometers per second and pack quite a punch—more than enough to cripple the Emissary or Samaritan. He would certainly not want to be on the receiving end.
The other drawback was the combination of time and distance. With the right sensors, such a missile would be easily detectable and, with enough lead time, anything in its flight path would be able to maneuver out of the way. Given that they weren’t designed as missiles, the onboard navigation system was not capable of such rapid retargeting. This was where teamwork came into play. Once they began working on modifying the probes to become missiles and were discussing the issues, one of the engineers suggested rigging the fusion drive to overheat and explode before impact so that instead of a ship having to dodge one fast, but very predictable missile, it would be subject to a barrage of rapidly moving debris, turning the interstellar rifle into a shotgun. While the explosion would not be the result of a nuclear process, just simple rapid, unmitigated heat buildup, it would be enough to disperse the debris across a large angle and dramatically increase the likelihood of hitting something—under the right circumstances.
And then there was the Samara Drive itself. As they had so successfully demonstrated when the shuttle carried the fugitive Atlantean, the ultraviolet exhaust of the ship’s propulsion system could be quite a devastating weapon. Of course, that, too, had its limitations. It was the ship’s propulsion system and, as such, was limited in how it could be targeted. To engage a target fore, the ship would have to rapidly rotate on its axis to bring the aft pointing in the correct direction. And, as it was being used as a weapon, it would be pushing the Emissary away from the engagement in a direction opposite to it.
Adding their measures together, the Emissary was not going to be completely helpless in a fight. Just mostly helpless. Jacobs sincerely hoped that none of these plans would ever have to be implemented, but as a Space Force captain, it was his job to be prepared. And he was very good at his job.
Jacobs activated his comm link and set it to be an all-hands message through the ship’s speaker system. “This is Captain Jacobs. As you know, we are headed for the Luyten b star system to find out more about the source of the radio signals beamed at Proxima b, and to find out who the awakened Atlantean was so eager to contact before her death. Though this is not a ship of war, we are doing everything we can to assure that we are not helpless when we arrive at our destination. I would like to commend the creativity of the crew in coming up with the stingers we hope we never have to use.
“Some are already in the cryobeds for the duration of the trip and the rest of us will soon follow suit. While we’re asleep, the ship’s sensors will be scanning what’s ahead, monitoring the radio signal from Luyten b for any significant changes, and listening for news from both Proxima b and Earth. If there are any significant changes, the ship will awaken me and select members of the crew to decide a course of action. If nothing changes, then we, like everyone else, will remain in cryo. The plan is to begin awakening the crew when we are three weeks out from the system’s heliopause, which should give us plenty of time to get the lay of the land before we enter the planetary system. The ship will have been decelerating for quite some time, bringing us to nearly a standstill relative to Luyten’s Star.”
He took a dry breath.
“We don’t know what we will find there, but I do know this crew is among the best that humanity has to offer with regard to the task ahead of us. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, clichéd, and sentimental, we are truly going where no human has gone before. Let’s do it well.”
* * *
Four days later, Jacobs was in the cryobed as Mak made the final checks before activating the system that would put him under for the remainder of the trip. The system would not activate until Mak had placed himself in the adjacent bed—satisfying one of the many flight rules created by the psych teams back on Earth, that there was never a time when only one human was awake on the ship. It was one of the rare times when Jacobs waxed philosophical. Few in cryosleep reported dreaming and the bed’s sensors bore that out. When in cryosleep, fewer than one in a thousand people experienced any sort of REM sleep whatsoever. And in those few, it was, at its most frequent, sporadic, and short in duration—perhaps once or twice in a year. It was the closest thing to death that Jacobs could imagine.
“Mak, do you believe in God?” Jacobs asked.
“Hmm? God? Well, yes, in fact I do. I was raised as an Eastern Orthodox Christian. My parents were very strong believers and they did their best to bring me and my two sisters up in the faith. Of course, like many people, I drifted from it during college and medical school, not giving it much thought until my mama died in a commuter train crash. I and my sisters were crushed, but though my otets missed her dearly, he seemed at peace with her passing. At first that made me angry, and I confronted him over it. It was then that I finally understood what it meant to be a believer. I wanted what he had. And now I have it,” Mak said, a faint smile appearing on his face.
Jacobs turned his head upward and replied, “Well, I must admit, I’m not in the same camp as you, but I do believe there is something more than this experience we call life. Being out here, experiencing the enormity of it all, and encountering others like us just seems…improbable. That doesn’t mean that I believe there is some mystical force that for some reason made itself known to an obscure tribe of primitives on an otherwise insignificant rock in the outer reaches of the galaxy. Far from it. No, if there is a god, or a purpose, then it must be larger than we humans. Then again, maybe it is all just a fluke of nature. Maybe we, the Proximans, and the Atlanteans are merely products of physical processes that precipitated out of the Big Bang. For some reason, I just don’t like that answer. Should I be worried that I’m thinking about these things?”
“Captain Jacobs, I would be worried if you didn’t. Only a fool doesn’t look at the majesty of the world…worlds…universe around them and have such thoughts. And you, sir, are not a fool. Now rest easy as I activate our cryobeds. We shall soon be awakened and among the first of the crew worshipping the porcelain gods as we recover from cryosleep. A side effect of this process that I must admit I would like to avoid,” Mak replied.
“To sleep and vomit.” Jacobs, like Mak, smiled, and said finally, “Let’s do this thing.”
Thirty seconds later, and for another several years, Jacobs and Mak experienced nothingness firsthand.