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CHAPTER 44

December 8, 2099 (Earth timeline)

December 8, 2099 (Ship timeline reset to Earth)

approximately 4.24 light-years from Earth

0 light-years from Proxima

“Captain Crosby of Earth!” the face of a very old female Proximan said. The video was very primitive and low resolution. “It is so wonderful to make your acquaintance. I am Secretary General Balfine Arctinier, the chief executive of Fintidier, which you call Proxima b. The representative governors of our lands have appointed me to make first real-time contacts with our brethren from the stars. Our astronomers tell us you are approximately twenty-five of your minutes away by signal speed. While we appreciate your first communication being in our primary language, that will not be necessary.

“In the ten years that you have been along your way to us, we have mandated worldwide training in your language. You call it English. We welcome you to our system and await further communications with you and your great ship. We are calling upon all of our governors to meet at our preplanned landing facility. We have been anxiously awaiting your arrival for a very long time and cannot wait to meet you in person. Attached to this communication are safety and quarantine protocols our various communities have agreed to. Please familiarize yourself with these protocols. We have time to discuss before your arrival. We look forward to hearing your next communication.”

* * *

“Alright, Zhao. Bring us to an orbit geostationary with the prescribed landing spot,” Crosby ordered. Ming Zhao sat in the pilot’s seat and was literally driving the Samaritan. Crosby waited as the ship slowed into geosynchronous orbit about forty thousand kilometers above the planet. “XO, sound the microgravity alert.”

“Aye!” the XO replied. “All hands, all hands. Prepare for acceleration all-stop and microgravity. Take microgravity stations now. Repeat. All hands, all hands, prepare for microgravity now, now, now.”

“Alright, Zhao, start a five-minute countdown to all-stop and make it happen,” Crosby said.

“Aye sir,” Zhao replied. “Roger, Captain. We are approaching forty-one-thousand-kilometer altitude over the landing spot. I have us slowing in a spiral that will end in five minutes with a final orbital relative velocity of about three point five kilometers per second. Countdown clock is ticking and trajectory course is laid in and activated.”

“Good, Zhao. I guess now we just ride it down. Hope none of you ate a big breakfast this morning.” Crosby could already feel the effects of the lower gravity. The ship had been at very low acceleration for a couple of weeks now and they were about to drop to no acceleration to speak of. The ship would be as “weightless” as they were in lunar dock. They hadn’t been weightless for a long while now and that was going to take a bit of adjustment. He half expected the scientist crew to be deathly sick by the end of the afternoon.

“Captain, I have the landing zone on high-resolution imagery if you want to see it,” Roca said from the astronav station.

“On viewer, Bob.”

“Aye.” Bob grabbed at something in the air before him and made a tossing motion toward the front and main data screen.

The screen in front of the bridge dome switched to an area on a small continent at the equator of the planet Fintidier. Crosby guessed that the continent was not much larger than Iceland or the United Kingdom and it appeared to be, for the most part, uninhabited. The land looked green with a large peak in the middle that suggested volcanic activity. The only inhabited area was the pinpoint marked as the landing zone. Over the past ten or so years since they had left Earth the Proximans had been building up a safe uninhabited location for the Earthlings to land with minimal exposure to the Proximans. Crosby realized that now that they were there and that the Proximans had started speaking English, it was only right for Earthlings to start referring to Proxima b as Fintidier. He wasn’t quite sure how the Proximans, or Fintidierians, decided to spell the name of their planet. To him, when he heard the aliens pronounce the name, it sounded more French than English. Had he been asked to spell it he might have spelled more like Fintideeyay. Maybe it was Cajun, he thought, and the people were Fintidayans. He wasn’t a linguist and he didn’t really give a damn.

There were a few buildings and lights about. It was nighttime currently over the landing zone and would be for another eleven days or so. Not that it really mattered since the star Proxima—which the locals called Finti, according to their protocols package—was a red dwarf and the peak of the light spectrum was in the infrared not the visible. Even during midday on Fintidier the light level was about that of twenty minutes before dusk or after dawn—in other words, very low visible light. In expectation of this, multiple types of starlight, low light, and infrared vision enhancement systems had been brought along. All of the landing party teams would have special low-light contact lenses issued to them as well as infrared glasses.

“Captain, we’re in position and cutting the engine in thirty seconds,” Zhao alerted him.

“Good. Bob, as soon as Zhao can take his hands off the wheel, you two work us out a landing party deorbit plan,” Crosby said.

“Roger that,” Roca replied.

“Captain.” Victor Tarasenko entered the stoop of the bridge just outside the main door, but inside the security door by the down ladder. “Permission to enter the bridge?”

“Yes Mr. Tarasenko, please.” Crosby waved him in. “How can I help you?”

“Captain, I’ve been conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance as we approached—all using our passive instrumentation. I’d like to suggest an active radar mapping of the planet as well as using the particle counters to look for terrestrial gamma ray sources.” Tarasenko shuffled the magnetic sneakers against the deck plates to keep his balance in the ever-decreasing microgravity. He stopped about a meter from the captain’s chair and kept his shoes locked onto the floor.

“I’m not sure how the, Prox . . . uh, Fintidierians will like us actively pinging their planet without asking,” Crosby replied to the Russian signal intelligence expert.

“They will not detect our digital radar, Captain Crosby. I have been paying very close attention to the signals-technology levels on the planet. They do not have digital capabilities and have yet to understand spread spectrum. If we use our modern low-power digital spectrum hopping radar systems with multipass filters they’ll never even know we had them on. And I think we should verify that they have been telling us the truth about themselves.”

“Very well, do what you need to do, but don’t get me into some interstellar diplomatic concern. Hell, Ambassador Jesus should be here and involved in all this. XO!” He turned to Artur’s station.

“On it, sir!” The XO switched about some virtual icons. “Ambassador Jesus to the bridge. Ambassador Jesus to the bridge.”

“While you’re at it, Artur, get Commander Rogers up here too.”

“Aye sir!”

“Captain! Engine all-stop in six, five, four, three, two, one, all stop,” Zhao reported. Crosby suddenly felt his stomach floating. He choked it back down.

“Great work, Zhao.” Crosby flipped a channel open. “CHENG, this is Crosby.”

“Aye, Captain?” Cindy Mastrano replied over the comm channel.

“Pilot says we’re all-stop and no more corrections needed. You are free to begin Samara Drive all-stop protocols and repairs. I want this ship ready to move as soon as you can get it so.”

“I’m on it, Captain. Anything else?”

“Nope. Crosby out.”

* * *

“The first thing we need to do, Captain, is to have Chief Walker and Colonel Ping take the OSAMs and drop our ISR”—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaisance devices—“our comm relay, and global positioning satellites into low Earth—uh, Fintidier?—orbit. I guess that’s a new acronym, LFO instead of LEO; doesn’t roll off the tongue as well, sir.” Rogers walked through the steps they needed to follow before making first contact with the Fintidierian people in person. Landing with an entire complement of civilians on an alien planet was all new to everyone. Rogers had been given the mission of making it happen safely and without creating an interstellar incident—honestly, it was Ambassador Jesus’s job to keep diplomatic incidents from happening. Rogers just had to keep them safe so they could do it.

“Right. LFO.” Crosby thought it was in good humor. “Walker and Ping, take the Orbit and Surface Access Modules. Are the payloads prepared and ready for deployment?”

“We’ve been awake for a month, Captain. SEALs don’t like boredom.”

“Good. I guess.” Crosby laughed. He wasn’t actually used to military on his ships. He was a corporate spaceman. “Okay. You deploy the satellites. Then what?”

“We bring the sats online and collect data for several orbits. We have thirty-two birds so a day should be enough to give us a good mapping and topography data as well as all the signals intel that Tarasenko could ever want. It will take a couple of days for the global positioning systems to settle in to high resolution, but we should get meter resolution within a few hours.” Rogers was starting to feel a bit queasy from the microgravity and was doing his best to clench his abdominal muscles and work his jaw to help. He’d been on naval ships at sea thousands of hours and never had problems. He’d only had a few hundred hours in microgravity and they were never his favorite. “Then, we can make our planetary descent to the designated location. Once we are certain it is safe and secure, the scientists and other crew can start settling in.”

“Alright. Let’s make this happen. Get your first landing party ready to drop first thing day after tomorrow.” Crosby moved a couple icons about in front of him. Rogers just stood at ease with his magnetic shoes holding him in place. He continued to clench his jaw as he thought he was on the verge of getting space sick. “Are Walker and Ping ready to go?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then don’t wait on me to tell you to go. Go,” Crosby told him. “And Mike . . . ”

“Captain?”

“Go get a micrograv patch from medical. We can’t have you tossing your cookies all over the ship.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“In fact, have your whole team do it.”

“On it.”

“Go.”



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