Original non-Trek starship....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
I've begun work on another shuttlecraft. This isn't a replacement for the one already modeled, but rather another type of vehicle. The first design modeled was a larger and heavier class of shuttlecraft that can transport large numbers of personnel and/or equipment for situations when it might be desirable to set up a base camp of operations for long term survey of a planet surface. The second shuttlecraft design will be about 70 percent the size of the transport and its primary purpose is transport of personnl for preliminary surface reconnaissance as well as routine transport for ship-to-surface and back.
The overall concept will be similar to the transport but details will differ.
The overall concept will be similar to the transport but details will differ.
So here we have the two shuttlecraft types: the Berkey transport type and the Mead reconnaissance type. The recon shuttlecraft is 30 persent smaller than the transport yet both have reconfigurable interiors depending on mission profile. Although the overall appearance appears the same the two craft are in fact not identical. the shape of the two hulls do fiffer from each in addition to the differing detail.
Here is a comparison of the transport shuttlecraft's size in relation to the starship.
Here is a comparison of the transport shuttlecraft's size in relation to the starship.
Last edited:
It was tiny, in the great scale of things.
----It was also silent, all the while intently watching and listening.
----And while listening it raced through perpetual night within an audacious whisper of light. In its wake it left a smudge of dim reddened suns while reaching for brightened ones always seemingly beyond reach.
----It listened and raced with great purpose, its existence defined to seek and understand.
----Yet it could not anticipate what.
ARRIVAL
The clock was insane.
----Still Ann understood mad, hyperactive behavior was an inevitable aspect of its function.
----In contrast another clock marked its time in a more familiar rhythm: tick, tick, tick, tick, tick… And yet in its own fashion it was just as crazed.
----It was a matter of perspective since both timepieces represented equally valid realities.
----The first chronometer measured real-time—that in the greater universe beyond the rakish diasynth hull as it cleaved through a very thin medium of relic photons, cosmic radiation and disseminated supernova remnants.
----In counterpoint its companion displayed relative time. For every moment the flight chronometer measured the real-time chronometer flashed one hour, ten minutes and forty-two seconds—a surreal affirmation of crowding light at .9999c.
----Ann had no choice but to experience relative time directly—that was simply how the universe worked. Yet she also experienced real-time albeit in a partitioned manner and something for which she was distinctly suited. Her unique nature also allowed her to wrest meaning from a visually compressed universe where anyone else saw inexplicable distortion. She’d been doing that for the past seventy-five days. Or the past fourteen and a half years depending on your perspective, and Ann perceived both.
----During cruising flight Ann focused the TPF arrays directly ahead where she could see where others couldn’t, assessing the potential of their target as well as others newly acquired. Astrometric, radial velocity and gravitational microlensing data would dictate whether Ann would accept or ignore the target and modify their course accordingly.
----She employed spectroscopic and infrared reflectivity analysis. The probabilities mounted. They had long passed the forty, fifty, sixty and seventy percentile. They neared ninety. That decided the matter and left her with one option. Ann initiated standard approach.
----She didn’t vocalize her intent since no one was present to acknowledge her. Her voice wouldn’t have carried anyway. Other than a scattering of telltale readouts the entire craft was cold, dark near vacuum with the exception of the natrium with its live vegetation and fauna. Even the sleep cellars were dim although that was changing even now—she had initiated stage one revival. Within a few hours it would be determined whether or not to bring the rest of the ship to light and warmth, and Ann would no longer be alone.
----On some level Ann didn’t mind being alone. She had something akin to eternal patience, which was another innate attribute of a ninth generation Artisen. In-flight she oversaw the suspension systems, managed all scanners, tended the stardrive and guidance as well as tirelessly monitored the quantum signal network. She also supervised a variety of robotics for varied tasks ship wide. Soon, though, there would be other voices and others’ thoughts to share.
----Their velocity began slipping incrementally and correspondingly the real-time chronometer began slowing. It was a marginal change considering Ann had engaged deceleration that would swiftly intensify to a titanic ten thousand gees. If Engineering were not now in vacuum the escalating hum of the NEI stardrive would have been distinctly noticeable from the lower decks.
----Of course the flight clock remained unaffected: tick, tick, tick… But slowing at ten thousand gees the disparate chronometers would reach a measure of near synchronicity within three days.
----I.R.V. Eagle sailed on toward its target.
* * *
Proxima was a barely discernable faraway glitter. And although nearer Alpha Centauri B was little more than Venus like casting a glow akin to moonlight upon the world.
----“Why?” she asked.
----Kev sought to keep his voice steady and meet his mother’s eyes in the late evening twilight. He could hear night birds offering him apparent encouragement from somewhere in the yard.
---- “I have to.” he replied.
----Her head shook with a curt swing to one side. She uncrossed her arms to seat herself before pressing further. “You could study here. Anything and everything known can be had right here and without leaving home. There’s nothing you can’t do from here. And you don’t have to risk anything.”
----Kev turned again from the night’s soft breeze and star lit sky beyond. “It’s not the same. From here it’s just images and dry information through someone else’s eyes. I have to see it myself. I have to touch it. It matters to be there. Here it’ll always be the same—breathing the same air and walking the same ground. The same two suns and three moons in the sky, same planets, and same constellations… And there are others out there. I know it.”
----He was winning. Nonetheless he could also feel her torment—the ache for him to be happy and complete against the hurt of letting him go. They were re-enacting a scene that had played out countless times through history likely since the first seafaring canoes.
----She knew she had lost and long before this moment. She’d lost since he began watching the clear night sky evermore often. He didn’t just watch the sky—in his heart he lived there already. And perhaps for the truly first time she no longer saw the boy but the burgeoning man.
----Still her long rehearsed words arose. “I’ll miss so much. And you won’t be back.”
----Kev reached for her hand. “Sure I will. You know that.”
----She smiled a bit ruefully. “Oh, you’ll visit every so often, every ten or twenty years maybe. But you’ll be like a ghost, hardly changing. Everything and everyone here will change so much. And you’ll feel out of place and apart because you’ll still be much the same as now. And soon enough we’ll all be gone.”
----His voice tightened. “Aren’t you overstating it? You’re going to live another eighty years, easy. We’ll still have plenty of time.” he insisted, forcing a smile.
----She smiled indulgently and squeezed his hand. “God, willing. But no, you’ll have a new home and that’s where you’ll really live. This will become just somewhere you’re from…”
----Sillinger opened his eyes to the soft light and calming hues of the sleep cellar. He licked his lips as he focused on his surroundings and his reminiscence faded. The lighting approximated early morning, matching the chronometer reading next to his sleeping couch: 0609 hours. Nice touch coordinating revival with the start of a new day, he reflected.
----He lay back pondering his reverie for another moment. One could dream a great deal while hibernating yet little of it usually stayed with you. His recurring dream was different because it was a version of actual memory and one he’d had for thirty years. Thirty years he could actually recall, but by calendar his recollection was more than two hundred years past. This was the consequence of the current take on life prolongation. Medical science had pushed average life expectancy to a hundred and twenty years, and life slowing hibernation in hand with relativistic starflight took it from there. Effectively it meant you really couldn’t go home again. The past didn’t slip away from you like for anyone else who stayed planet bound. Going into deep space you buried your past, reclaimed only fleetingly in periodic visits.
----Sillinger sat up and rubbed his eyes. The clear sleep couch casing was retracted leaving him to breathe ship’s air for the past hour. He shivered for a second—more a mental reflex at sleeping in a chilled atmosphere for ten weeks—and appreciated awakening to a comfortably normal environment. His heart rate and respiration were elevated back to normal and he took a deep breath—routine since his biosynths adapted him for naturally induced hibernation. Ann had merely communicated to his system that it was time to awaken.
----The attending autodocs had retreated earlier after removing the requisite sensors and catheters before he awoke. The autodocs had monitored the biosynths regulating his metabolism while he slept. Extended starflight demanded comfort so you went to sleep and awoke in normal fashion—autodocs and biological nanotech managed the rest.
----Sillinger stood and unconsciously ran his hands down his naked sides. He touched the stubble on his face even as he referred to a small console nearby where two chronometers marched in their differing ways. The flight chronometer read 337.03 DAYS. The velocity readout read 0.962 and continued to fall incrementally.
----A third readout was more currently relevant.
---- “Eighty-nine percent? That’s rather good, Ann.” he opined aloud.
----The ship replied. “TPF evaluation suggests we’ll likely find a favorable system.”
---- “About time, too. This’ll be our fourth star system in almost a year. It would be nice to find something we can actually walk on.” He ran fingers through his dark hair. “I need to clean up.” he said mostly to himself. “I’m hungry, too.”
----Ann replied, “Flight Control will be fully on-line in twenty minutes.”
----Sillinger nodded. “Fine.” As Command Flight Specialist he had to concur with her reasoning for any revival. Now Ann automatically initiated stage two and began warming the ship dependent upon required access. A handful of the two hundred crew would now be awakened.
----Waking from a hibernating suspension often induced heightened sensations in some. It soon faded, but for now Sillinger could feel a trace of air current on his skin. He was certain he caught the scent of fresh water, earth and vegetation. He could even just hear the singing of birds. To be sure he knew those things were actually there, transmitted throughout the ship, but usually they existed at a more subliminal level. Also the ship was very still now. Once more people began their routines the mere knowing of others about would be sufficient distraction.
----A barely audible sigh caught Sillinger’s attention. At once he remembered the four other sleep casings in this compartment. He turned to see who was rising from their assigned couch then quickly retrieved a pair of briefs. It wasn’t that he harbored any sense of false modesty, but it was prudent to at least partially veil any instinctive bodily response on his part. Heightened awareness could be awkward.
----Prolonged hibernation had long been equated with something akin to near death experience—the mere idea that you were balanced a whisper from irreversible life cessation. On both a conscious and subconscious level that often elicited something of an irrepressible urge to affirm being alive. In a few people this manifested itself as a temporary eating binge. For quite a few others it stimulated heightened sexual arousal, also temporary…most of the time.
----He slipped his briefs on even as he caught sight of a delicate back curving suggestively while she stretched her arms. Ringlets of raven hair caressed the back of her neck and shoulders even as she rose and turned in his direction. Sillinger bit the inside of his lip and forced himself to meet her deep eyes rather than the inviting swell of her breasts and curve of her belly. He cursed himself over his every thought being sexually flavored.
----Sillinger held no romantic feelings for Life Specialist Rehema at-Ta'ir yet his body wasn’t much concerned with his emotions in his present state. She was gracefully cat like and he felt as if a taut retrieval cable was drawing him irresistibly towards her.
----Something knowing in her eyes brought a soft smile to at-Ta'ir’s lips. Nonetheless she retrieved and donned her own briefs and blouse. She ran a finger up the front of the blouse triggering a nanoseam that closed the fabric. “Good morning, Captain.” she added.
---- “Morning.” he grunted, trying not to dwell on how the fabric embraced her. A sharp impulse to tear it aware blazed in his mind. In his state he swore that her innocent greeting held some degree of suggestion or invitation, but he willed it aside.
----He knew for the next week or so there would be a run of assignations among the revived crew. It was understood and accepted so long as it didn’t interfere with responsibilities and ship’s operations. Years ago he had also known such engagements, but as he rose in position and responsibility he became more circumspect, accepting such entanglements could potentially compromise his authority.
----Sillinger grabbed his own shirt. “I’ll see you topside, Lieutenant.” he said then exited the compartment.
----In the corridor he growled, “The water had better be like ice, Ann.”
2
Eagle hit Tau 1 Eridani at one-tenth light after two and a half days deceleration over a half light year to brake from cruising. Still decelerating Ann engaged the ship’s highly attuned sensor arrays and telescopes. Additionally she began conducting polarimetric scans of the system’s assorted planetary bodies.
----They slipped through the system’s Kuiper belt while Sillinger was neck deep in “paperwork.” A consequence of hibernation was the backlog of data from Niwa Starport that accumulated while you slept: shifting political and social situations across the inhabited worlds, scientific and technological advances, feedback to previous ship’s inquiries and reports, updates regarding sta-tus on other ships’ missions, and finally personal correspondence for ship’s personnel.
----Of course Ann effectively prioritized everything so that little of it actually needed to be ad-dressed immediately, and much of it was simple data update directly into the ship’s library. But relatively little could still amount to weeks of work. Sillinger was a competent enough adminis-trator, but he loathed this aspect of his position.
---- “Shit.” The plex screen went transparent as he closed the terminal and pushed back impa-tiently from his desk. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms and sighed in exaspera-tion, muttering aloud, “Why the hell do they send me half this crap? A million years of evolution, planets separated by bloody light years and the dumb bastards still manage to find ways to fight amongst themselves.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Idiots!” Stories are always the same. Only the fools change.
----Even so Sillinger understood the real intent of the seemingly superfluous material. It perpetuated a connection with the evolving societies left behind and those cheating time leaping into the future. Human evolution had not purged boredom, though, and while he could read and assimilate extensive files in mere seconds to scant minutes much of the materiel was still excrutiatingly tedious.
---- “Ann?”
---- “Yes, Captain?” the Artisen replied.
----Sillinger rubbed his temple. “Could you sever the QSN link, please?”
----The Artisen actually hesitated. “I…don’t understand.”
---- “Hmm... Never mind. Instead, full outboard view, please. I’d also like to hear something classic, either piano or guitar.”
----The cabin lighting dimmed and the entire plex wall and part of the ceiling went transparent. Within seconds Sillinger beheld the universe as seen from the outer reaches of Tau 1 Eridani. The scene was relatively still since even at .1c the ship’s motion was practically indiscernible.
---- “Slow rotate.” he asked.
----Momentarily the glittering band of the Milky Way slid into view followed by a stately parade of faraway galaxies. He changed the view’s angle of rotation and the Large Magellanic Cloud soon emerged.
----He next requested specific coordinates. The sky slowly spun then stopped, looking back the way they had traveled. Alpha Centauri lay dead center of the view with Sol up a little to the right. Further up and right he could clearly see Spica and farther down and left he made out M83.
----Behind them lay the sphere of human space from which they had coursed forty-six light years. A twenty light year bubble of influence was miniscule in terms of galactic scale yet it was daunting by human measure. Fast relativistic transit merely made the distances manageable. Ships had gotten faster and faster over eight hundred years yet little had really changed. Starships were the only tactile connection between worlds. Otherwise one could rely only on the immediacy of quantum signaling, but that carried no goods or genuine personal contact even through telepresence.
----And “fast” had become a very relative term. The late twenty-first century had given them fusion drives and speeds reaching a third of light—fine enough for early autonomous AI probes, but it was human hibernation that finally brought the very nearest stars within reach. Limited manned interstellar exploration became real.
----The twenty-second century gave them antimatter drives allowing them to reach fifty percent of light and a sliver more of the galaxy came within grasp. The first Artisen probes were launched and spread outward. Manned exploration expanded as well as the first major colonization endeavors. Quantum signaling then permitted now distant voices to connect immediately with those left behind.
----The biggest advances arrived in the next century with the Casimir engine, manipulations of gravity, negative energy and antigravity, siphoning energy from mass and coaxing it from atomic angular momentum. Extreme and elegant science merged with deft engineering and “fast” was wholly redefined. Transits at eighty and ninety percent light became routine. Honing the technology flung the ships even faster.
----Sillinger looked sideways to an alcove holding a partial collection of his books. He scanned over some of the titles: Exploration Volume One: 2000 BC–1900 AD, Exploration Volume Two: 1900-2800 AD, Military History And Combat Theory, The Jules Verne Collection, The Heritage Universe Omnibus, The Voyages Of Captain James Cook, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Great Ship Chronicles, Speculative Sciences, Starport Magellanic, The Great Explorer Series: Magellan, Zheng He, Drake, Sinclair, Berezin, Li Tsu and others. He also had a collection of visual media works, some of them reissues of works dating as far back as the mid twentieth century including Ben Hur, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, From The Earth To The Moon, King Kong, Interstellar, Explorator Enterprise and Voyage Of The Arrow. The last title elicited a private smile. The title referred to the actual famous twenty-second century starcraft and not the star clipper he had commanded before Eagle.
----With a sigh of disgusted resignation he turned back to his desk terminal.
* * *
----Engineering was set in the lower aft end of the ship, high above the titanic NEI projector and forward of the hulking secondary antimatter drive. Presently the facility was bathed in a soft violet glow emanating from the Casimir engine core. The core casing itself was a large opaque ovoid disk when the engine was off. In operation the casing went evermore transparent as the engine’s output increased. At full power the casing was nearly invisible.
----At nominal output the Casimir glow wrought exotic highlights in Svetlana Ilyushin’s hair. The First Engineer trailed her hand along a railing separating the massive engine core from the rest of the engineering deck. Her fingertips discerned fantastic energies telegraphed by a subtle vibration.
----She turned back to scrutinize consoles that were already being attended by two other Engineering Techs. Satisfied with what she saw she next stepped to an unattended board.
---- “Ann?” Ilyushin asked. “Those service bots were deployed?”
---- “Eight of them are making their separate ways across the hull even now.”
----Ilyushin nodded. “Show me.”
----Eight displays appeared on the dark plex screen giving her views of the outer hull from the servibots’ perspectives. Although there were no internal indications of exterior hull damage the bots were dispatched for onsite inspection nonetheless. Everything appeared normal, but something caught her attention, something on the fore underside of the hull.
----She fingered the second display wherein it enlarged. “Here, Ann. Magnify this and move the bot closer.”
----The view zoomed in even as the triangular shaped bot advanced on its adhesive wheels.
----It was a bright and lengthy scar suffered sometime prior to their recent deceleration. Some small object had managed to get past the navigational deflection array to deliver a glancing impact. Nevertheless the silvery diasynth had done its job in diffusing the impact energy. Peering closer Ilyushin could see the scar was already well along repairing itself. When finished the hull would again be smooth with only a blurred and burnished discoloration to mark the collision. It would hardly be novel since much of the forward facing parts of the ship were marked by similar discolorations of varying description.
----Earlier she had walked a thorough inspection of the forward inner hull, finding no evident breach in the impact hull or the cosmic ray shielding. Still she wanted very much to inspect the exterior hull herself, but even at a leisurely ten percent light it would be unnecessarily hazardous to venture outside even in a workpod. There would be time enough when they settled on orbit somewhere.
----The Engineer called up a log recording the performance of the deflection array. She found a notation of a malfunctioning laser to which Ann had already affected repairs. She nodded in satisfaction before turning from the panel and making way across the deck.
----Her office bordered on the austere. It held only a desk with computer terminal, two chairs, a wall sized plex display and a food and beverage dispenser. The severity of decor was broken only by a display of replica spacecraft Ilyushin had researched and crafted by her own hand. The collection included the ancient Apollo Command and Lunar Excursion Modules, a fusion-drive deep space surveyor, an early antimatter-drive star clipper and finally a cutting edge deep space reconnaissance cruiser of which there were only two in existence and currently operational.
----She tabbed her desk terminal and set herself to tackling her backlog of Starport downloads.
* * *
----Flight Control, Eagle’s brain and nerve center, was located in the upper section of the ship’s main hull. It was dominated by a spanning plex screen curving up and around the forward part of Flight Control, fostering the illusion of a great balcony suspended out in space. There was even a railing to complete the illusion. Presently it showed Tau 1 Eridani as little larger than any other sun strewn across the rest of the starfield. Their present speed was practically indiscernible, the monotony of the view broken only occasionally by an asteroid they sailed passed.
----Since wakening First Sciences Specialist Lucas Quoc-Ni had been immersed in reviewing data Ann had gathered during the weeks/years of their approach. He paid little mind to the rather commonplace Kuiper belt flotsam Eagle was gliding through. The data flashed as his neuro-synths allowed him to scan and assimilate the data at an accelerated rate.
----He kept an eye for any discernible electromagnetic bands that might waver even a fraction from normal although Ann monitored that tirelessly and would immediately announce any worthy aberration. Not likely, he thought to himself cynically. We’ve been listening to the galaxy for nine hundred years and not even one stray signal telling us someone else is out here. We’ve visited dozens of systems within twenty light years and still nothing. It beggars the imagination! He found it particularly galling in light of the incredible diversity of life—from microbial to complex plant and animal—which had been found in other star systems. Yet not one tangible sign of alien sentience.
----At present Quoc-Ni was more intent on planetary phenomena: how many, locations, size, and compositions. Were they Jovian gas giants or frozen liquid and gas or searing molten rock? Were they mineral poor? Even if they were terrestrial might they be oversized with burdensome gravi-ty or too slight to even hold an atmosphere? Ann’s earlier findings could be confirmed with infrared reflectivity to strongly indicate the presence of vegetation. Spectroscopy of atmosphere could detect oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and water. Positive findings would, of course, merit more intensive and detailed investigation.
----In nine centuries few welcoming worlds had been found beyond the Sol system, and even most of those had required varying degrees of terraforming and adaptation. Quoc-Ni was intimately familiar with that fact. He was from Tau Ceti where artificial habitats were the norm. Even after four hundred years of terraforming an acceptable surface environment was still at least decades away. Or so they were always told. The world had been the right size and mineral rich, but the atmosphere would take centuries to be scrubbed into something tolerable. Terraforming Mars had been rather straightforward in comparison.
----Perhaps out of spite his world had been christened Hades where its inhabitants were relegated to a subterranean existence. They had stubbornly burrowed into the surface to eventually fashion sprawling communities sealed from the hostile atmosphere. Nonetheless they had cultivated a rich culture and a society eventually reaching one hundred million. The introduction of transpar-ent diasynth permitted them to erect domes over their communities and allow inhabitants to finally venture outside their sealed structures unencumbered by lifesuits.
----Quoc-Ni’s early life had made him into something of a paradox. He was fascinated with the existence of environments totally different from his own familiar one and he longed to see and touch them himself. Yet the issue hit him when he first stepped onto a planet surface with a breathable atmosphere. The vast openness elicited a distinct agoraphobia.
----His childhood had conditioned him to enclosed environments. He could easily function within the confines of an orbital habitat or a spacecraft. Even a lifesuit mollified his condition to a tolerable extent when venturing into an inhospitable environment. But open environments were just manageable only through long mental discipline and force of will. He could look out into deep space or down onto a sprawling planet through a vast transparency of diasynth, but actually stepping onto an open world gripped him with anxiety.
----He leaned closer to his displays as the ship’s vast sensor arrays gathered data to fashion an overall portrait of the star system’s configuration. Then a new display caught his attention.
----A crease etched itself onto his brow.
---- “Ann, give me more on this.” he indicated.
----It was also silent, all the while intently watching and listening.
----And while listening it raced through perpetual night within an audacious whisper of light. In its wake it left a smudge of dim reddened suns while reaching for brightened ones always seemingly beyond reach.
----It listened and raced with great purpose, its existence defined to seek and understand.
----Yet it could not anticipate what.
ARRIVAL
The clock was insane.
----Still Ann understood mad, hyperactive behavior was an inevitable aspect of its function.
----In contrast another clock marked its time in a more familiar rhythm: tick, tick, tick, tick, tick… And yet in its own fashion it was just as crazed.
----It was a matter of perspective since both timepieces represented equally valid realities.
----The first chronometer measured real-time—that in the greater universe beyond the rakish diasynth hull as it cleaved through a very thin medium of relic photons, cosmic radiation and disseminated supernova remnants.
----In counterpoint its companion displayed relative time. For every moment the flight chronometer measured the real-time chronometer flashed one hour, ten minutes and forty-two seconds—a surreal affirmation of crowding light at .9999c.
----Ann had no choice but to experience relative time directly—that was simply how the universe worked. Yet she also experienced real-time albeit in a partitioned manner and something for which she was distinctly suited. Her unique nature also allowed her to wrest meaning from a visually compressed universe where anyone else saw inexplicable distortion. She’d been doing that for the past seventy-five days. Or the past fourteen and a half years depending on your perspective, and Ann perceived both.
----During cruising flight Ann focused the TPF arrays directly ahead where she could see where others couldn’t, assessing the potential of their target as well as others newly acquired. Astrometric, radial velocity and gravitational microlensing data would dictate whether Ann would accept or ignore the target and modify their course accordingly.
----She employed spectroscopic and infrared reflectivity analysis. The probabilities mounted. They had long passed the forty, fifty, sixty and seventy percentile. They neared ninety. That decided the matter and left her with one option. Ann initiated standard approach.
----She didn’t vocalize her intent since no one was present to acknowledge her. Her voice wouldn’t have carried anyway. Other than a scattering of telltale readouts the entire craft was cold, dark near vacuum with the exception of the natrium with its live vegetation and fauna. Even the sleep cellars were dim although that was changing even now—she had initiated stage one revival. Within a few hours it would be determined whether or not to bring the rest of the ship to light and warmth, and Ann would no longer be alone.
----On some level Ann didn’t mind being alone. She had something akin to eternal patience, which was another innate attribute of a ninth generation Artisen. In-flight she oversaw the suspension systems, managed all scanners, tended the stardrive and guidance as well as tirelessly monitored the quantum signal network. She also supervised a variety of robotics for varied tasks ship wide. Soon, though, there would be other voices and others’ thoughts to share.
----Their velocity began slipping incrementally and correspondingly the real-time chronometer began slowing. It was a marginal change considering Ann had engaged deceleration that would swiftly intensify to a titanic ten thousand gees. If Engineering were not now in vacuum the escalating hum of the NEI stardrive would have been distinctly noticeable from the lower decks.
----Of course the flight clock remained unaffected: tick, tick, tick… But slowing at ten thousand gees the disparate chronometers would reach a measure of near synchronicity within three days.
----I.R.V. Eagle sailed on toward its target.
* * *
Proxima was a barely discernable faraway glitter. And although nearer Alpha Centauri B was little more than Venus like casting a glow akin to moonlight upon the world.
----“Why?” she asked.
----Kev sought to keep his voice steady and meet his mother’s eyes in the late evening twilight. He could hear night birds offering him apparent encouragement from somewhere in the yard.
---- “I have to.” he replied.
----Her head shook with a curt swing to one side. She uncrossed her arms to seat herself before pressing further. “You could study here. Anything and everything known can be had right here and without leaving home. There’s nothing you can’t do from here. And you don’t have to risk anything.”
----Kev turned again from the night’s soft breeze and star lit sky beyond. “It’s not the same. From here it’s just images and dry information through someone else’s eyes. I have to see it myself. I have to touch it. It matters to be there. Here it’ll always be the same—breathing the same air and walking the same ground. The same two suns and three moons in the sky, same planets, and same constellations… And there are others out there. I know it.”
----He was winning. Nonetheless he could also feel her torment—the ache for him to be happy and complete against the hurt of letting him go. They were re-enacting a scene that had played out countless times through history likely since the first seafaring canoes.
----She knew she had lost and long before this moment. She’d lost since he began watching the clear night sky evermore often. He didn’t just watch the sky—in his heart he lived there already. And perhaps for the truly first time she no longer saw the boy but the burgeoning man.
----Still her long rehearsed words arose. “I’ll miss so much. And you won’t be back.”
----Kev reached for her hand. “Sure I will. You know that.”
----She smiled a bit ruefully. “Oh, you’ll visit every so often, every ten or twenty years maybe. But you’ll be like a ghost, hardly changing. Everything and everyone here will change so much. And you’ll feel out of place and apart because you’ll still be much the same as now. And soon enough we’ll all be gone.”
----His voice tightened. “Aren’t you overstating it? You’re going to live another eighty years, easy. We’ll still have plenty of time.” he insisted, forcing a smile.
----She smiled indulgently and squeezed his hand. “God, willing. But no, you’ll have a new home and that’s where you’ll really live. This will become just somewhere you’re from…”
----Sillinger opened his eyes to the soft light and calming hues of the sleep cellar. He licked his lips as he focused on his surroundings and his reminiscence faded. The lighting approximated early morning, matching the chronometer reading next to his sleeping couch: 0609 hours. Nice touch coordinating revival with the start of a new day, he reflected.
----He lay back pondering his reverie for another moment. One could dream a great deal while hibernating yet little of it usually stayed with you. His recurring dream was different because it was a version of actual memory and one he’d had for thirty years. Thirty years he could actually recall, but by calendar his recollection was more than two hundred years past. This was the consequence of the current take on life prolongation. Medical science had pushed average life expectancy to a hundred and twenty years, and life slowing hibernation in hand with relativistic starflight took it from there. Effectively it meant you really couldn’t go home again. The past didn’t slip away from you like for anyone else who stayed planet bound. Going into deep space you buried your past, reclaimed only fleetingly in periodic visits.
----Sillinger sat up and rubbed his eyes. The clear sleep couch casing was retracted leaving him to breathe ship’s air for the past hour. He shivered for a second—more a mental reflex at sleeping in a chilled atmosphere for ten weeks—and appreciated awakening to a comfortably normal environment. His heart rate and respiration were elevated back to normal and he took a deep breath—routine since his biosynths adapted him for naturally induced hibernation. Ann had merely communicated to his system that it was time to awaken.
----The attending autodocs had retreated earlier after removing the requisite sensors and catheters before he awoke. The autodocs had monitored the biosynths regulating his metabolism while he slept. Extended starflight demanded comfort so you went to sleep and awoke in normal fashion—autodocs and biological nanotech managed the rest.
----Sillinger stood and unconsciously ran his hands down his naked sides. He touched the stubble on his face even as he referred to a small console nearby where two chronometers marched in their differing ways. The flight chronometer read 337.03 DAYS. The velocity readout read 0.962 and continued to fall incrementally.
----A third readout was more currently relevant.
---- “Eighty-nine percent? That’s rather good, Ann.” he opined aloud.
----The ship replied. “TPF evaluation suggests we’ll likely find a favorable system.”
---- “About time, too. This’ll be our fourth star system in almost a year. It would be nice to find something we can actually walk on.” He ran fingers through his dark hair. “I need to clean up.” he said mostly to himself. “I’m hungry, too.”
----Ann replied, “Flight Control will be fully on-line in twenty minutes.”
----Sillinger nodded. “Fine.” As Command Flight Specialist he had to concur with her reasoning for any revival. Now Ann automatically initiated stage two and began warming the ship dependent upon required access. A handful of the two hundred crew would now be awakened.
----Waking from a hibernating suspension often induced heightened sensations in some. It soon faded, but for now Sillinger could feel a trace of air current on his skin. He was certain he caught the scent of fresh water, earth and vegetation. He could even just hear the singing of birds. To be sure he knew those things were actually there, transmitted throughout the ship, but usually they existed at a more subliminal level. Also the ship was very still now. Once more people began their routines the mere knowing of others about would be sufficient distraction.
----A barely audible sigh caught Sillinger’s attention. At once he remembered the four other sleep casings in this compartment. He turned to see who was rising from their assigned couch then quickly retrieved a pair of briefs. It wasn’t that he harbored any sense of false modesty, but it was prudent to at least partially veil any instinctive bodily response on his part. Heightened awareness could be awkward.
----Prolonged hibernation had long been equated with something akin to near death experience—the mere idea that you were balanced a whisper from irreversible life cessation. On both a conscious and subconscious level that often elicited something of an irrepressible urge to affirm being alive. In a few people this manifested itself as a temporary eating binge. For quite a few others it stimulated heightened sexual arousal, also temporary…most of the time.
----He slipped his briefs on even as he caught sight of a delicate back curving suggestively while she stretched her arms. Ringlets of raven hair caressed the back of her neck and shoulders even as she rose and turned in his direction. Sillinger bit the inside of his lip and forced himself to meet her deep eyes rather than the inviting swell of her breasts and curve of her belly. He cursed himself over his every thought being sexually flavored.
----Sillinger held no romantic feelings for Life Specialist Rehema at-Ta'ir yet his body wasn’t much concerned with his emotions in his present state. She was gracefully cat like and he felt as if a taut retrieval cable was drawing him irresistibly towards her.
----Something knowing in her eyes brought a soft smile to at-Ta'ir’s lips. Nonetheless she retrieved and donned her own briefs and blouse. She ran a finger up the front of the blouse triggering a nanoseam that closed the fabric. “Good morning, Captain.” she added.
---- “Morning.” he grunted, trying not to dwell on how the fabric embraced her. A sharp impulse to tear it aware blazed in his mind. In his state he swore that her innocent greeting held some degree of suggestion or invitation, but he willed it aside.
----He knew for the next week or so there would be a run of assignations among the revived crew. It was understood and accepted so long as it didn’t interfere with responsibilities and ship’s operations. Years ago he had also known such engagements, but as he rose in position and responsibility he became more circumspect, accepting such entanglements could potentially compromise his authority.
----Sillinger grabbed his own shirt. “I’ll see you topside, Lieutenant.” he said then exited the compartment.
----In the corridor he growled, “The water had better be like ice, Ann.”
2
Eagle hit Tau 1 Eridani at one-tenth light after two and a half days deceleration over a half light year to brake from cruising. Still decelerating Ann engaged the ship’s highly attuned sensor arrays and telescopes. Additionally she began conducting polarimetric scans of the system’s assorted planetary bodies.
----They slipped through the system’s Kuiper belt while Sillinger was neck deep in “paperwork.” A consequence of hibernation was the backlog of data from Niwa Starport that accumulated while you slept: shifting political and social situations across the inhabited worlds, scientific and technological advances, feedback to previous ship’s inquiries and reports, updates regarding sta-tus on other ships’ missions, and finally personal correspondence for ship’s personnel.
----Of course Ann effectively prioritized everything so that little of it actually needed to be ad-dressed immediately, and much of it was simple data update directly into the ship’s library. But relatively little could still amount to weeks of work. Sillinger was a competent enough adminis-trator, but he loathed this aspect of his position.
---- “Shit.” The plex screen went transparent as he closed the terminal and pushed back impa-tiently from his desk. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms and sighed in exaspera-tion, muttering aloud, “Why the hell do they send me half this crap? A million years of evolution, planets separated by bloody light years and the dumb bastards still manage to find ways to fight amongst themselves.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Idiots!” Stories are always the same. Only the fools change.
----Even so Sillinger understood the real intent of the seemingly superfluous material. It perpetuated a connection with the evolving societies left behind and those cheating time leaping into the future. Human evolution had not purged boredom, though, and while he could read and assimilate extensive files in mere seconds to scant minutes much of the materiel was still excrutiatingly tedious.
---- “Ann?”
---- “Yes, Captain?” the Artisen replied.
----Sillinger rubbed his temple. “Could you sever the QSN link, please?”
----The Artisen actually hesitated. “I…don’t understand.”
---- “Hmm... Never mind. Instead, full outboard view, please. I’d also like to hear something classic, either piano or guitar.”
----The cabin lighting dimmed and the entire plex wall and part of the ceiling went transparent. Within seconds Sillinger beheld the universe as seen from the outer reaches of Tau 1 Eridani. The scene was relatively still since even at .1c the ship’s motion was practically indiscernible.
---- “Slow rotate.” he asked.
----Momentarily the glittering band of the Milky Way slid into view followed by a stately parade of faraway galaxies. He changed the view’s angle of rotation and the Large Magellanic Cloud soon emerged.
----He next requested specific coordinates. The sky slowly spun then stopped, looking back the way they had traveled. Alpha Centauri lay dead center of the view with Sol up a little to the right. Further up and right he could clearly see Spica and farther down and left he made out M83.
----Behind them lay the sphere of human space from which they had coursed forty-six light years. A twenty light year bubble of influence was miniscule in terms of galactic scale yet it was daunting by human measure. Fast relativistic transit merely made the distances manageable. Ships had gotten faster and faster over eight hundred years yet little had really changed. Starships were the only tactile connection between worlds. Otherwise one could rely only on the immediacy of quantum signaling, but that carried no goods or genuine personal contact even through telepresence.
----And “fast” had become a very relative term. The late twenty-first century had given them fusion drives and speeds reaching a third of light—fine enough for early autonomous AI probes, but it was human hibernation that finally brought the very nearest stars within reach. Limited manned interstellar exploration became real.
----The twenty-second century gave them antimatter drives allowing them to reach fifty percent of light and a sliver more of the galaxy came within grasp. The first Artisen probes were launched and spread outward. Manned exploration expanded as well as the first major colonization endeavors. Quantum signaling then permitted now distant voices to connect immediately with those left behind.
----The biggest advances arrived in the next century with the Casimir engine, manipulations of gravity, negative energy and antigravity, siphoning energy from mass and coaxing it from atomic angular momentum. Extreme and elegant science merged with deft engineering and “fast” was wholly redefined. Transits at eighty and ninety percent light became routine. Honing the technology flung the ships even faster.
----Sillinger looked sideways to an alcove holding a partial collection of his books. He scanned over some of the titles: Exploration Volume One: 2000 BC–1900 AD, Exploration Volume Two: 1900-2800 AD, Military History And Combat Theory, The Jules Verne Collection, The Heritage Universe Omnibus, The Voyages Of Captain James Cook, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Great Ship Chronicles, Speculative Sciences, Starport Magellanic, The Great Explorer Series: Magellan, Zheng He, Drake, Sinclair, Berezin, Li Tsu and others. He also had a collection of visual media works, some of them reissues of works dating as far back as the mid twentieth century including Ben Hur, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, From The Earth To The Moon, King Kong, Interstellar, Explorator Enterprise and Voyage Of The Arrow. The last title elicited a private smile. The title referred to the actual famous twenty-second century starcraft and not the star clipper he had commanded before Eagle.
----With a sigh of disgusted resignation he turned back to his desk terminal.
* * *
----Engineering was set in the lower aft end of the ship, high above the titanic NEI projector and forward of the hulking secondary antimatter drive. Presently the facility was bathed in a soft violet glow emanating from the Casimir engine core. The core casing itself was a large opaque ovoid disk when the engine was off. In operation the casing went evermore transparent as the engine’s output increased. At full power the casing was nearly invisible.
----At nominal output the Casimir glow wrought exotic highlights in Svetlana Ilyushin’s hair. The First Engineer trailed her hand along a railing separating the massive engine core from the rest of the engineering deck. Her fingertips discerned fantastic energies telegraphed by a subtle vibration.
----She turned back to scrutinize consoles that were already being attended by two other Engineering Techs. Satisfied with what she saw she next stepped to an unattended board.
---- “Ann?” Ilyushin asked. “Those service bots were deployed?”
---- “Eight of them are making their separate ways across the hull even now.”
----Ilyushin nodded. “Show me.”
----Eight displays appeared on the dark plex screen giving her views of the outer hull from the servibots’ perspectives. Although there were no internal indications of exterior hull damage the bots were dispatched for onsite inspection nonetheless. Everything appeared normal, but something caught her attention, something on the fore underside of the hull.
----She fingered the second display wherein it enlarged. “Here, Ann. Magnify this and move the bot closer.”
----The view zoomed in even as the triangular shaped bot advanced on its adhesive wheels.
----It was a bright and lengthy scar suffered sometime prior to their recent deceleration. Some small object had managed to get past the navigational deflection array to deliver a glancing impact. Nevertheless the silvery diasynth had done its job in diffusing the impact energy. Peering closer Ilyushin could see the scar was already well along repairing itself. When finished the hull would again be smooth with only a blurred and burnished discoloration to mark the collision. It would hardly be novel since much of the forward facing parts of the ship were marked by similar discolorations of varying description.
----Earlier she had walked a thorough inspection of the forward inner hull, finding no evident breach in the impact hull or the cosmic ray shielding. Still she wanted very much to inspect the exterior hull herself, but even at a leisurely ten percent light it would be unnecessarily hazardous to venture outside even in a workpod. There would be time enough when they settled on orbit somewhere.
----The Engineer called up a log recording the performance of the deflection array. She found a notation of a malfunctioning laser to which Ann had already affected repairs. She nodded in satisfaction before turning from the panel and making way across the deck.
----Her office bordered on the austere. It held only a desk with computer terminal, two chairs, a wall sized plex display and a food and beverage dispenser. The severity of decor was broken only by a display of replica spacecraft Ilyushin had researched and crafted by her own hand. The collection included the ancient Apollo Command and Lunar Excursion Modules, a fusion-drive deep space surveyor, an early antimatter-drive star clipper and finally a cutting edge deep space reconnaissance cruiser of which there were only two in existence and currently operational.
----She tabbed her desk terminal and set herself to tackling her backlog of Starport downloads.
* * *
----Flight Control, Eagle’s brain and nerve center, was located in the upper section of the ship’s main hull. It was dominated by a spanning plex screen curving up and around the forward part of Flight Control, fostering the illusion of a great balcony suspended out in space. There was even a railing to complete the illusion. Presently it showed Tau 1 Eridani as little larger than any other sun strewn across the rest of the starfield. Their present speed was practically indiscernible, the monotony of the view broken only occasionally by an asteroid they sailed passed.
----Since wakening First Sciences Specialist Lucas Quoc-Ni had been immersed in reviewing data Ann had gathered during the weeks/years of their approach. He paid little mind to the rather commonplace Kuiper belt flotsam Eagle was gliding through. The data flashed as his neuro-synths allowed him to scan and assimilate the data at an accelerated rate.
----He kept an eye for any discernible electromagnetic bands that might waver even a fraction from normal although Ann monitored that tirelessly and would immediately announce any worthy aberration. Not likely, he thought to himself cynically. We’ve been listening to the galaxy for nine hundred years and not even one stray signal telling us someone else is out here. We’ve visited dozens of systems within twenty light years and still nothing. It beggars the imagination! He found it particularly galling in light of the incredible diversity of life—from microbial to complex plant and animal—which had been found in other star systems. Yet not one tangible sign of alien sentience.
----At present Quoc-Ni was more intent on planetary phenomena: how many, locations, size, and compositions. Were they Jovian gas giants or frozen liquid and gas or searing molten rock? Were they mineral poor? Even if they were terrestrial might they be oversized with burdensome gravi-ty or too slight to even hold an atmosphere? Ann’s earlier findings could be confirmed with infrared reflectivity to strongly indicate the presence of vegetation. Spectroscopy of atmosphere could detect oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and water. Positive findings would, of course, merit more intensive and detailed investigation.
----In nine centuries few welcoming worlds had been found beyond the Sol system, and even most of those had required varying degrees of terraforming and adaptation. Quoc-Ni was intimately familiar with that fact. He was from Tau Ceti where artificial habitats were the norm. Even after four hundred years of terraforming an acceptable surface environment was still at least decades away. Or so they were always told. The world had been the right size and mineral rich, but the atmosphere would take centuries to be scrubbed into something tolerable. Terraforming Mars had been rather straightforward in comparison.
----Perhaps out of spite his world had been christened Hades where its inhabitants were relegated to a subterranean existence. They had stubbornly burrowed into the surface to eventually fashion sprawling communities sealed from the hostile atmosphere. Nonetheless they had cultivated a rich culture and a society eventually reaching one hundred million. The introduction of transpar-ent diasynth permitted them to erect domes over their communities and allow inhabitants to finally venture outside their sealed structures unencumbered by lifesuits.
----Quoc-Ni’s early life had made him into something of a paradox. He was fascinated with the existence of environments totally different from his own familiar one and he longed to see and touch them himself. Yet the issue hit him when he first stepped onto a planet surface with a breathable atmosphere. The vast openness elicited a distinct agoraphobia.
----His childhood had conditioned him to enclosed environments. He could easily function within the confines of an orbital habitat or a spacecraft. Even a lifesuit mollified his condition to a tolerable extent when venturing into an inhospitable environment. But open environments were just manageable only through long mental discipline and force of will. He could look out into deep space or down onto a sprawling planet through a vast transparency of diasynth, but actually stepping onto an open world gripped him with anxiety.
----He leaned closer to his displays as the ship’s vast sensor arrays gathered data to fashion an overall portrait of the star system’s configuration. Then a new display caught his attention.
----A crease etched itself onto his brow.
---- “Ann, give me more on this.” he indicated.
Similar threads
- Poll
