ECHELON'S END©
Book 1
Last Generation
By
E. Robert Dunn
FORWARD:
Considerably more than ten millennia had passed since the home planet of Terra had finally broken apart under shattering tidal stresses, leaving only fragments drifting in eternal orbit about a now-childless sun. The first colonist had evacuated the ancient star group and founded the peace-loving Terran races that occupied the regionally governed worlds known as The System.
When the Terrans landed on the first colony planet of Thessaly, there were no children in the crew. Multiple births were encouraged using fertility drugs. The children came soon enough, for it was planned that there would be a five-fold increase in numbers during the first generation. The thousand females and males aboard the transport ship represented the cream of their generation: genetically strong, all of superior intelligence, and all with histories of superior clan health. The gene lines searched for longevity factors, for this thousand had to assure the survival of their race. Life continued. Life spread and multiplied throughout the quadrant onto the worlds of Carthagia, Demetria, and eventually to the planet Aidennia. It was only one world within The System that had been civilized for many millennia.
Ever since two pioneer ships found the blue-green and white-clouded world some four thousand orbits before, the spacers’ occupants and their descendants built a prosperous, self-satisfied civilization. They grew into a proud race that had tamed a world so wild that it tested the survival of the fittest amongst the Terran progenitor settlers. The weak died before they could produce offspring, yet the infant mortality rate was frightful for thousands of orbits. Nevertheless, the Terran species displayed its surprising adaptability. The land changed Terrans before Terrans changed the land as they spread north and south from the first settlement of Novice along the planet’s equator.
The race’s physiology subtly altered while outward appearances changed very little. Muscle tissue became denser, motor reflexes became sharper, perceptions broadened, optic capacities widened. A completely new range of physical and mental abilities began developing, just to allow Terrans to live under normal condition on a planet where weather changes were drastic, whose sun had a variable as to heat and to light intensity. Subsistence achieved, the Terrans began to build. They built with a vengeance, these tuned-up Terrans. With vengeance, and ruthlessness, and a good deal of bloodshed. They had to do what worked – fast. Those who did not let nature stand in their way did not allow other Terrans to do so, either. In building, as in adapting, the primary rule was to survive. Once a civilization began to come together on Aidennia, Terrans began to turn their attention on values. The Aidennians took as an assumption in their lives the fact that there was a right and wrong in the Universe; to kill was wrong, to give someone food as right. Through generations of slavery, warfare, and of Terran sacrifice in the name of progress, the population of Aidennia ached inwardly for tranquility. They became a people of magnificent social organization, culture, art, and commerce. They turned away from being a military people; they thrived instead, on their remarkable mercantile abilities.
With the development of the supralight plasma drive in 4518 A.T. and the subsequent improvements for more efficient Space travel, the Aidennians were able to form with other planets a republic, The System. For the Aidennians also exported their culture as well as goods, and a derivative culture grew up on the Core Worlds of The System with their remarkable architectural logic, their hypnotic art, and the richness of cultural artifacts. In centuries to come, the Aidennians and their allies would live eventually a harmonious existence under a constitution set into motion by The System's elite senate seated by The Echelon.
The Echelon themselves were a caste of terran life forms that were the off-spring of genetically compatible parents from any number of sentient races belonging to The System. Like any result of interspecies coupling, mutations arose that were better at adapting to new environments and situations. The Echelon were such a change in the evolutionary matrix that became who they were after passing through a physical puberty as well as a spiritual rite of passage known as Ka-tela. Through the generations of mutation and growth, eventually all citizens made this crossing into adulthood. Only those same-gendered in a mass majority were Echelon -- the minority continued on to be opposite-gender oriented and continued to reproduce and feed the numbers of The Echelon.
Systemite planets were bureaucratic monarchies. While Echelon spiritual vicars or “priests” dominated the government and while the senate had some ministerial functions, the principle role of the senate was that of CEO of The System. The Systemites operated their territories as businesses, and entrepreneurships. While the bulk of the population enjoyed the wealth of interplanetary trading, the circumstances of that trade controlled tightly from the senate. Beneath the senate was a large administration of scribes and bureaucrats who carefully regulated production and distribution both within The System and without. This administration kept incredibly detailed records, which exercised a great deal of control over the economy.
In order to facilitate trade, The System and their allies developed the most advanced navy ever seen. The Aidennians had been an "astrocracy," that is, a "star power". With the rest of The System planets they developed a military navy, eventually called Spacecorps, all the while concentrating on trade and mercantilism. Initially, the Aidennians built warships that were mercantile ships with the capability of defense against pirates. Their trade was extensive.
The concentration of wealth produced social equality; the wealth spread liberally. Society organized around kinship lines rather than to be organized around "class," that is, economic function. Life was good for just about everyone. In addition, there was no inequality along gender lines. Cultural equilibrium was achieved, tranquility soon followed.
The inhabitants of The System became tranquil too soon. That was to be their downfall.
Unknown to The Echelon was a power hungry and restless saurian race who called themselves Taurus Lacertilians – meaning bull lizards -- or Tauron in Systemite Contemporary Lingua. Totally alien in form and thought, they were an obsessive and dominant force. A force that one-day felt they should rule the galaxy. This thought drove them far across the stars toward their first ambush against The System. Their first battle with The System began abruptly. They did not expect the republic to be prepared for war. To their surprise, The System was ready for any attack, and for the next century, they continued in battle readiness. As time wore down the rhythm of war, The Systemites forgot the extent of Tauron treachery and concentrated all energies on the time twisting of deep Space travel. To once again reach out into the void and spread life amongst the coldness of Space. In 6752 A.T., as Aidennia began its first colonization mission to a remote uncharted star and its serene satellite, the Taurons began a mission of their own…
“Target”
CHAPTER ONE:
SYSTEM STAR CYCLE: 6752.0719 A.T.SYSTEM
STAR CYCLE: 6752.0719 A.T.
PLANETARY DATE: 171/1955
LAUNCH TIME: TEE--MINUS 02:32:30
A tranquil sphere hung in Space under a white cloud.
From a vantage point some four hundred kiloretems above, Medical Commander Dara Lidasiress was watching it beyond the thick syntheglass of an observation viewport; the sight was dizzying, fascinating. The cloud-shrouded planet Aidennia. It seemed to lie almost in the trajectory of the Orbiter 1: Aidennia Station. The light of a strong, middle-aged sun cataloged as Pintarus 19 fell on the cloud.
Every so often, its rays illuminated attractive patches of blue and green on the surface of the planet concealed beneath its halcyon mass, giving hints to the planet’s life abundant waterways and of its dense forests giving way to grasslands. Over millions of cycles, the continents of the planet Aidennia had drifted apart, jostled together, and regrouped to form new landmasses. It now was a world of two broad regions. In the west, a single landmass, to the east several continental plates fused but still separated from the western continent by the small and shallow inland Eocene Sea. Island subcontinents to the north and south with coral reefs bordered by the mighty Tethys Ocean.
It was a lush green world covered in a tropical and sub-tropical paradise whose continents lined by mangrove swamps behind which were dense deciduous rainforests, where each landmass had developed distinctive endemic animals and plants, natural selection had favored the most adaptable. Water levels and global temperatures were high – the spread of flowering plants filled the forests with fruits and scents and in the dense, heavy, and mobile waters, marine fauna and flora thrived. Life was sweet in the forests and waters that clothed the planet. Life grew healthy on diets of leaves, vines, roots, and fruit. In the forests was a menagerie of large vertebrates such as winged aviators, hoofed plant-eaters, and clawed carnivores. The warm planetary climate meant that the complex coral reef ecosystems flourished, as did the diverse off shore aquatic mammals, fish, and rich plankton and krill that roamed the globe.
Sprinkled here and there amongst the green and the blue of Aidennia resembling sparkling stylish jewelry was urban development, incandescent and translucent yellow, hallucinatory bright and sleek. Magnificent parishes populated by great engineers and architects, building magnificently towering structural constructs in cities with hot and cold fountains, statuary, communal dining halls and stone walls plated with precious metals, harbors and docks, spaceports, meditation temples, arboreal parks, athletic and cultural centers.
The very heart of The System hummed and grew, governing and guiding hundreds of solar groups and their populous worlds down there, on the lush, verdant world; a wealth of Aidennian culture thrived. The people of this world possessed great wealth thanks to the natural resources found throughout their planet, living simple, virtuous lives. Here was a planetary society interacting with many different interglobal cultures. Aidennia was thought more as a world rather than nations. Freedom of religion and cultural practice a guarantee. No one culture or group was able to dominate the rest.
Within that framework of diversity, all individuals on Aidennia and beyond had certain inalienable rights, including the material basics of existence, health care, education, and legal equality. The land, air, and water of Aidennia were in the common stewardship of the terran family, and not owned by any individual or group. The fruits of an individual’s labor belonged to the individual, and not appropriated by another individual or group. At the same time, terran labor on Aidennia – and throughout The System – was part of a communal enterprise, given to the common good. Aidennia, as all Systemite economic systems, reflected both these facts, balancing self-interest with the interests of society.
The goal of planetary as well as Systemite economics was not ‘sustainable development’ but a sustainable prosperity for each planet’s biosphere. Therefore, each planet’s landscape itself had certain ‘rights of place’ that were honored. The goals of environmental alterations were minimalist and ecopoetic, reflecting the values of universal harmony. Only a portion of each System planet lower than the five-kiloretem contour made terran-viable. Higher elevations, constituting some thirty percent of a planet, remained in something resembling their primeval conditions, existing as natural wilderness.
Decided eons ago during the early unification of The System’s first planets and subsequent habitation of other worlds that it was a historical process, as the colonization of new worlds was the first habitation of another planet by terrankind. As such, the perception in those formative times that colonization should be undertaken in a spirit of reverence for the planet and for the scarcity of life in the Universe. Those first settlements set precedents for further terran habitation of solar groups, and suggested models for the terran relationship to those planets’ environment as well. Thus The System’s first worlds, or Core Worlds, occupied a special place in history, and were remembered when the necessary decisions concerning life anywhere were made.
A giant oceanic storm lay framed before Dara’s eyes, capturing the image of a hurricane coiled to strike the Western Continent’s gulf coast of Cheves Province. High clouds, borne on a hundred-kiloretem-a-node jet stream, sphinctered together as they coursed diagonally across the observation viewpane before her. The crescent edge of the world studded with stars as the celestial bodies far beyond her home planet glimmered through the white vapor. Elsewhere in the endless vista of Space, a multitude of naked stars were burning in all their glory.
Dara's attention refocused as her peripheral view caught a glimpse of her reflection coming off the window. A tall, powerful slender, fine-boned figure, with high cheekbones and penetrating chocolate eyes that gave a look of great delicacy founded in extraordinary resiliency framed by a neatly cropped mane told that she was no shallow youth, but a fully mature adult.
Her figure was snug inside a flight hibernation oversuit, firm and svelte. Her angular features were still unlined for all of her seventy-plus cycles; seventy had become the new fifty. An athletic siress of three, she well carried the biological rewards bestowed upon a terran female who had lived the majority of her life in a germ-free environment. A simple gene-booster treatment could have erased the silver salting of her pepper hued hair, but she elected to keep her hair natural. It served to remind those younger around her that she was of the generation that still valued the aging processes. Her image superimposed queerly over the world below like some omniscient goddess scrutinizing her patron planet for judgment or reward, although it was she who felt like the subject awaiting sentence.
A skilled practitioner of Space medicine, she had taken up a position here on Orbiter 1 after promotions within the ranks of the Aidennian-System Spacecorps. She had three children to her credit with her spouse, all of who had achieved success and recognition in their own chosen fields. A warm feeling pervaded her being as Dara thought of her clan, all together, all successful, and all about to embark on an adventure where survival would be a game with the life forces of the Unknown.
She and her clan, along with several other families, composed of scientists and terra-forming specialists, were the leading figures in the Mira Probe Mission. The colonizing team was to conduct a manned landing on a new planet discovered by deep thrust telescopic probes. A distant star beyond the known limits of The System, scientists called Mira.
Pride should have been the only emotion she felt as she and the others awaited clearance to board the probeship AST Saarien docked to the Orbiter 1, yet the simple uncertainty of what lay ahead caused the feeling of fear to creep its destructive talons into her consciousness. Mira was a star light-cycles from Aidennia and the colonized allies of The System. It was a remote and uncharted celestial object serving as a primary solar body to Mira-IV, a planet-sized satellite. Yet it had shown favorable evidence of supporting System life and ultimately, it might solve the current population explosion that was ringing throughout known Space.
Aidennia selected by The Echelon from the myriad of inhabited worlds to be the first planet to colonize the Unknown. Since Aidennia was the hub of The System's peaceful administration, and the most technologically and spiritually advanced, the choice was obvious: Aidennia was to play the role of trailblazer.
Out of thousands of candidates, Dara Lidasiress and the other crewmembers selected and trained. Time seemed to have passed too quickly. She could not believe that the event was only moments away. Within heartbeats, she and those she had grown to know, love, and respect would be ushered off into deep Space. Spending the next three and a half months held in a state of suspended animation. Re-awakening automatically as the Saarien entered Mira's solar group.
Beyond the vapor of the Aidennia’s atmosphere, hung two attending satellites, each of their mass approximately one eightieth that of Aidennia. The two airless orbs housed mining teams, scientific communities, Spacecorps security bases, and industrial plants. Revolving around them were Orbiter stations staffed with military, medical, and administrative personnel. Fantastic lunar colonies, Aidennia's global watchdogs, silently guarding against sneak alien attacks. Together, the Orbiters and the moon colonies formed an entire planetary support system and provided much of the research for the Mira Probe Mission.
Out-System Space, once so mysterious, so unattainable, now within grasp.
Dara grinned with some happiness knowing she and the others were doing a service for their race and its allies. Yet the sadness in departure remained. She drank in the sight of her siressworld one more time. She burned every cloud and land formation into her memory and made sure she would never forget the colors and the beauty of Aidennia.
Saying good-bye had not been easy, especially to her elder sibling, Aspera. A native Aidennian, Dara was born the second daughter of Wilhelm Berlsire and Lida Maesiress. Dara’s siress was a brilliant neurologist while her sire was the founder and owner of Aero-Space Engineering Corporation, a large firm famous for its air-spacecraft navigation systems designs; she inherited the brilliance of her sire, and her capacity to heal from her siress. Her parents enrolled her in a private academy catering to the needs of gifted children. Dara had a normal childhood despite her obvious intelligence, good looks, and clan affluence.
That all changed shortly after her elder sister Aspera had graduated from an engineering lyceum in Bensalem Province, her parents were killed on re-entry from a moonbase business/pleasure trip when the shuttle they were on broke up due to faulty wiring and crashed. Aspera took over running Aero-Space Engineering Corporation and had become Dara’s only legal guardian; together they occupied the clan domicile on Aidennia. Dara continued with her education under the loving and watchful eye of her elder sister all the way through her acceptance, graduation, and subsequent enlistment in Spacecorps Medical.
Aspera Lidasiress, along with friends and business associates, were all supportive of the Mira Mission venture; yet there had been tears and sorrow at the departure. A sadness that had kept a small place in her heart now pulsed as Dara viewed Aidennia below.
As Orbiter 1 spun, its arc brought it directly over the planet’s Western Continent. Aidennia’s landmasses inhabited districts divided into territories governed as administrative population units. Seen from orbit, cities resembled toy villages in paperweights. Many of them had smaller domes all around their districts that had merged to become a kind of greater cityplex, covering almost one hundred and eighty degrees of a territory, with pistes interconnecting each vaulty bubble.
One cluster of development caught the physician’s eye. It was cosmopolis built entirely within a caldera, occupying the ground floor. A collection of forested parks, penthouse skyscrapers with arcuate balconies, glass elevators to rooftops with heliports, pistes, flying freeways …the entire crater covered in a city.
Dara could not help but to take one more look at her natal soil, Ashtangi Province. Stepping over to the observation window’s control panel, she tabbed in a few key commands.
Quickly a holographic-overlay eclipsed itself across the vast, blue, and shining, spinning globe of Aidennia. In the center of the picture, tucked between two gentle folds in a caldera landscape, were three massive domes covering a breathtaking panorama of city buildings; all the metropolises on Aidennia were domed, because at twenty-seven kilometers high the air was a tenth as thick (thirty or forty millibars) as it was at the datum – or sea level. The metropolis was vast, attested to by the data scrolling in columns alongside the main image. It sat just inside an outer ring of water, spread across an oblong plain covering a circle 43 mets by 18 mets (70 kr by 30 kr).
This was a densely populated area where the majority of the metroplexes population lived. Massed glass towers rose, some 102 floors high, almost to the transparent dome roofs, where landing pads for helicopters and aircars were located, giving residents a variety of alternative travel options.
Busy thoroughfares connected the towers. Small craft jetted about in the air. Boasting no crime, no pollution, and no over-crowding, Ashtangi Province was a veritable utopia, able to accommodate up to 3,332,000 people. It was a typical Aidennian metropolis. It provided residential apartments, guest accommodations, commercial offices, retail businesses, recreation and cultural areas, large cafeterias. It followed the planetary urban philosophy that represented and commemorated the victory of progress over stagnation, science over superstition, prosperity over depression, conservation over wastefulness, beauty over ugliness, serenity over tensions, enchantment over drabness, wealth over squalor, cleanliness over dirtiness, efficiency over inefficiency, success over failure, convenience over inconvenience, comfort over discomfort, security over insecurity, and happiness over unhappiness.
A network of monorails connected Ashtangi Province across the countryside. Beyond the city lay a fertile plain 330 mets (530 kr) long and 110 mets (190 kr) wide surrounded by another canal used to collect water from the rivers and streams of the mountains which soared to the skies and surrounded the plain to the north. An abundance of wild animals roamed the oblong plain famous for its various geysers, hot springs, and other geothermal features.
Lakes, rivers, and meadows dotted the mountains. Food supply for the province came from farms in the surrounding countryside just beyond the metroplexes circular highway, as well as greenhouses, fish tanks, and a meat-cloning center next to agrostations. Agrostations provided all kinds of herbs, fruits, and nuts. Every rotate, fresh produce, fish, and cloned meats where brought to the city kitchens from the greenhouses, fish farm, and cloning center. All food was cooked and eaten the same rotate it was brought in, this eliminated the need for canning, freezing, preservatives. It was a well-balanced, ecological synergism between land and urbanization.
It would be quite some time before Dara Lidasiress’ gentle eyes would see this sight again. She turned away, not wishing to view more she discontinued the 3-D close-up veil. As the observatory port cleared, she sat in a nearby sofa and rested her head meditatively in her hands.
* * *
Commander Capel Perezsire stared out the curving viewport of his emptying-out office in the elevated dome of Orbiter 1: Aidennia Station, and sighed. Behind him, a team of Spacecorps crew-personnel scurried about moving packed mementos and essential data-carrying hardware. Before him, the view from the towering artificial satellite of homeplanet was panoramic, letting him see the vast urban belt of the metropolitan mega-tropolises extending beyond even the horizon slipping under a dark, terminator sky. If he turned 180 degrees, he would see the same sight, where another metro-population center merged into another.
Aidennia seen from Space looked extraordinarily lovely to him: a perfect disk of blue, stippled with white masses of clouds. The outlines of the continents were surprisingly indistinct, vaguely apparent amidst a wondrous swirl of atmospheric vapors against the vastness of the waterways that gave Aidennia its beauty from this vantage point.
Perezsire witnessed a hurricane wrapped ready to bash the Western Continent’s gulf coast of Cheves Province. Touching contact points on the panoramic bay-port’s sill caused holographic data streams and graphic schematics to overlay the image far below the view.
Like all weather, fueled by heat of sun-drenched topical waters, which powered the marine cyclonic storms by sending warm, moist air rushing toward the frigid upper atmosphere like smoke up a chimney. As the surrounding air sucked in at the base of the storm, Aidennia’s rotation gave it a twist, creating a whorl of rain bands. Those whiptails of thunderstorm activity were strongest where they converged in a ring of rising, spinning air, the eyewall, which enclosed the cloud-free eye.
The tempest up for inspection propelled to an altitude of fifty thousand retems and was climbing more as the rising air finally vented itself in spiraling exhaust jets of cirrus clouds. According to preliminary data, the meteorological AI predicted the gale-force winds hypothetically sent some six hundred and fifty mets, packing some one point five trillion watts of power in its winds – equivalent to about half the planet’s entire power generating capacity.
To occupy his mind, Commander Capel surveyed the scrolling dropsonde sensor data and found the engine that manifested this great weather came from surface waters of eighty noches Heit or more, moist air, and little wind shear – a difference in wind speed at the surface and aloft that could tear apart a developing hurricane. Tropical climate shift brought warmer waters and reduced wind shear allowed the Tethys Ocean to spawn this aquatic demon. Spaceborne infrared sensors revealed more details than ordinary satellite images that showed only cloud tops, charting the size and shape of the warm eye, and satellite radar and microwave sensors mapped the rain.
The only reprieve came in the form of a landfall; it was a death sentence – cutting off the hurricane’s watery fuel supply. The storm inevitably would weaken. That would be scant solace for those caught up in its death throes. Most casualties came not from wind but from rain, waves, and surge – the vast amount of ocean water pushed in front of the storm, raising in some incidents some twenty-eight retems.
From the corner of his eye, Perezsire followed the purposeful orbit of a weather metamorphose satellite as it aimed a suppression antenna planetward. A beam of deionization energy struck the vortex of the mighty storm from the antenna’s barrel and instantly the typhoon began to spiral apart. A powerful downdraft generated, counter to the cyclone’s updraft. The whirl began to slow, to shudder. Then, with one water-flattening whoosh of air, blown out. It became nothing more than a benign tropical storm – an unremarkable cluster of thunderstorms. A kraken slain.
Homeplanet seemed to Perezsire like a vast placid park, sprinkled here and there with concentrations of civilization. It was a tranquil, tamed world that he sorely would miss, as were the special collection of those closest to him. Quick flashes of memory suddenly came to mind as he drifted off into a private past-life of merriment and celebration, of laughter and determination, and of accomplishment and felicitations.
Born the fourth child of an Eastern Continent’s leading scientific family, Capel learned at an early age that hard work and determination had its rewards regardless of his good looks, athletic prowess, and high intelligence that gave him an edge over most children of his generation. Perezsire’s life had been one of popularity and reputation in both academic pursuits as well as athletic accomplishments. His interests in geology and astronomy had led him into the field of Planetary Geological Sciences when he enrolled in Spacecorps. Graduating with honors, he quickly tackled degrees in Astrophysics and Applied Planetary Geology.
Through it all, he had won a number of awards for outstanding ability and leadership, ushering his quick military ascent to Commander within the ranks of Spacecorps exploratory branch. Along his rise in position, Capel had acquired many friends and associates that were saddened but congratulatory when the announcement had been made that he and his clan had been one of four teams selected to be onboard the probeship AST Saarien when it left as The System’s first test colonization mission in almost a century. There had been parties and celebrations after the cycle long training for the mission.
With the rigors of mission training and the congratulations for boarding behind him, Capel was growing restless. He was eager to leave Aidennia and the stable environment it provided for himself and his family. The need for the opportunity to work in the field of geo-astrophysics under some more practical application called to him.
The Aidennia he knew was not the one of his sire’s generation. It was still the prime center of terran civilization, even if most of what was new and eventful was taking place in the off world settlements – notably on the twin moons, which now had come to be worlds more Aidennian-like than Aidennia in every respect but its gravitational pull. The moons turned constantly against the black star-flecked background of Space, brilliantly white, their scarred faces unique in their beauty – of a different kind – excited Capel Perezsire too: their starkness, their simplicity, their airless static unchangeability of them.
The closest moon was approximately 356,000 kiloretems (221,600 mets) distance from Aidennia, while its fraternal twin’s orbit was approximately 406,997 kiloretems (252,950 mets). Each moon made visible by reflective sunlight and had a slightly elliptical orbit. Each mark on their surfaces was a fascinating kind of inspiration: the long record of time, each a long poem that had taken billions of cycles to create and demanded admiration for their immensity. For Perezsire, his homeplanet’s natural satellites white faces held only purity, each a beautiful austerity, a wonderful cool majesty that seemed almost something sacred. Each moon was an exciting, intellectually stimulating place with constant expansion going on. The civilization on Aidennia was mature and sedate, but the moons were the frontier, with all the wild energy that frontier challenges inevitably called forth.
The population of Aidennia --- of all the System worlds – was growing, growing like lichen over every rock in the collective solar groups. Billions of people, trillions of people, quadrillions of people, all as close as immortal as they could make themselves …
So why did Perezsire choose Mira 4 over the frontier already circling above the very skies that he called home? It was time for expansion. It was a good thing, leaving for Mira 4. Good for his clan, his species, he told himself, trying to suppress subtle doubts that were bubbling up inside.
“Commander…” a Spacecorps yeoman called his name from the room’s opened doorway. The male stood gesturing like a juggler, hand-signaling the movers what to take next as he simultaneously carried on a conversation with another petty officer via a collar-pinned communicator. “Commander, excuse me. The briefing is about to begin and General Ondon Yisire has requested your presence.”
Nodding, Perezsire moved purposefully alongside the eager male down the echoing metal corridor of the office suite and back toward the domed conference room. The corridor brightly lit and filled with people. Spacecorps garbed males and females hurried passed him, a few chattering at the people nearest them, others striding along without speaking while staring straight ahead – it was a motley sea of black form-fitted uniforms with polychromatic striping. Occasionally, a hovercar filled with people floated passed, scattering the crowd with a sharp whistling sound.
Situated overhead every ten retems or so were holographic section identification placards, directing personnel and visitors to specific sections of the station by letter and color code. To one side, Perezsire noticed a young dark-haired female ensign utilizing one of the corridor’s wall-mounted flat panel terminals. At the touch of her hand and after speaking some key words, the station’s stand-by legend faded and the display glowed a light pattern that formed the words Level 4, Area-J. An overlay of the level appeared with a glowing locator on it that indicated the designated area.
Over the Public Address system announcements in Contemporary, Anglia, and other languages added to the hustle and bustle of the station and its thoroughfares.
“Shuttle Flight One-Zero-Three-One to Orbiter Three Sigma, leaving at Zero-Two-Forty-Five from Concourse C, Gate five”; “Suborbital flight twelve-twenty to Sivananda Province, Concourse B, Gate fifty, now boarding”; “Suborbital Flight Five-Zero-Three to Tada Drashtuh, now boarding, Concourse A, Gate nine”; “In-System Flight forty-one-eleven from Sheey now disembarking Concourse D, Gate twenty-five…”
Perezsire kept his stoic expression and avoided the passersby eyes as they strode passed him down the corridor. A bank of vision ports lined the passageway, giving a sectional panoramic view of the docked probeship AST Saarien. He paused at the observatory vision ports, wide-eyed with admiration, his internal thoughts abruptly and utterly forgotten, including the hurrying yeoman. It was easy locating the supership amid the clutter of alien and Spacecorps vessels daisy-chained around the points of the station’s docking pylons; its emblem graced its sleek hull like a beacon.
The spacestation and the probeship both tidally locked in orbit around Aidennia. Hung poised together with Saarien’s starboard airlock on its upper most deck kissing one of the station’s tubular docking bays while its ventral hull held protectively in the dock’s spaceframe scaffolding. Both orbited at seven planetary radii, affording an excellent view of most of Aidennia’s surface.
Orbiter 1 itself was of an old-fashioned doorknob-locking mechanism hybrid design, with its two knobby ends jutting away from a central command-operations hub that in turn had habitat thoroughfares bristling off its pivot to connect to an encompassing outer utility ring. On this vast concentric hoop were attached the station’s engineering, maintenance, defense, and docking bays.
By any standard of measurement, Orbiter 1: Aidennia Station was typical of its contemporaries swinging in the Aidennia solar group, being that of an extremely large free-flying orbit station respective of its origins and current residents. Its basic design form was that of a set of staked regular orbs built out from a vertical stepped-cylinder core that served as the focal point to a spinning ring housing tall sweeping pylons with wide buttresses. It was to one of these massive assemblages of alloy and composites. The probeship linked from one of the axis command-operations deck viewpanes from where Perezsire observed.
Capel could not help but enjoy his point-of-view’s vista and the dance between station and ship as seen through the transparent sectioned viewbank. It was a dramatic impact heightened by the light that flooded the probeship from every angle within the huge orbital station, seemingly doubly brilliant against the sapphire-jade orb of Aidennia and the velvet blackness of Space beyond.
The Saarien had a beauty that was different from any other spaceship yet seen, a slim soarer, as swift and tireless as an aquatic raptor. It was a series of six majestically streamlined, composite welded sections divided into forty-two decks accessible via a series of service tubes, travellators, and lifts linked together in a straight line by a central spine. Its silvery photoreceptive hull embedded with nanoretem-scale sensors that constantly monitored the outer skin materials' condition. Molecular wires of elongated molecules, some of which even naturally self-assembled into useful configurations, carried signals from all of these in-woven sensors to the central computer. Nanotubes in the hull skin acted as conductors and semi-conductors. Self-healing materials made of long-chain molecules called ionomers kept the probeship airtight.
The command module being the probeship’s first section where the Saarien piloted. The second module used as a lab, medical and life support facilities, primary crew’s accommodations and relaxation compartments. Next were the gourd-like designs of the navigation and computer section, followed by the area containing the service airlocks, stowage racks, and maintenance and hangar bays. The fourth module tapered away from the rounded hulls of the service and maintenance modules to form the triangular dimensions of the main water and atmospheric recycling units section followed by the fifth module housing the probeship’s nuclear furnace. The final part of the Saarien was the hyperplasmic-drive chamber with hydrogen ionic collection nacelles and dual drive units. Running down the axis of the juggernaut was its defensive arrays; the weapons alone packed enough punch to take out a small moon with a single shot. The spacer’s architecture resembled a grand musical score composed of a sprawling metallo-bio-cyber-construction.
Perezsire knew the probeship’s specifications evolution from drawing board to construction. As he observed the visual fruition of that progression it delighted his sparking eyes, tickled his memories. He marveled at the Saarien’s command section, the upper most structure of the spacer that thrusted off the tapered superstructure’s mainframe like a majestic curved crest. This module was ten decks tall and within its walls were the majority of the probeship’s command facilities.
Below the command decks, specifically on decks 11 through 21 were a sampling of all probeship services from surgery and the intensive care unit of the medical section to recreation facilities of the relaxation module to the Saarien’s environmental habitat and astrophysics labs. On decks 22 through 32 were segmented compartments dedicated to medical experimentation, life support’s hibernation center, and food preparation labs for the probeship’s hydro-and-aeroponic farms, dining areas, storage facilities, and bio/chem. terraforming labs. A separate section included the hangars and service bays. The remaining decks down to 42, an industrial area containing all the recycling facilities required making the probeship self-sufficient, and the necessary control centers for Saarien operations should the upper level control stations ever become useless.
“Commander,” came the urging whisper of the escorting yeoman. The male stood expectantly in the opened hatchway into Mission Operations.
Perezsire had been taking a momentary flight-of-fancy on a virtual tour of the majestic conglomerate in his mind. The tactful reminder from the patient yeoman was enough to snap him out of his reverie and quicken his gait into the active situation conference room; leaving the yeoman to his other duties. It was a familiar scene to Perezsire.
There was a command console, supporting desks round the perimeter in a horseshoe. Beyond the conference spread there was another larger central command area, seen through a panoramic window where several technicians were moving about on routine chores. The Mission Ops chamber was alive with electronic equipment and monitoring devices reaching toward the curved ceiling. As everywhere, Spacecorps personnel filled the room. It was full of controllers, troopers, maintenance personnel – along with syntheform androids of varying models and sizes, all of who were diligently involved in preparing for the launch of the AST Saarien.
The officers Perezsire had to see busily engaged around a great circular console centered in the horseshoe desk configuration, their attentions riveted to a hologram flashing brilliantly colored readouts. A holographic representation of the federated worlds that comprised The System was up for review.
Centered in the light display were the Core Worlds, inner planets of The System. These planets where the first to form the United Allied Democracy of Planetary Governments, their populations reached out into the void to neighboring outer worlds to form the collection of sentient species that founded The System. The planets Carthagia, Thessaly, Demetria, Osprey, Thebes, Thrace, Asenath, Potiphar, Heliopolis, Trano, Yama, Ettarre, Aidennia, Sheey, Calliope, Doria, Mantilles III, Januria, and Venita comprised the Core Worlds. This cluster of planetary suns consisted of stars set less than a light-cycle a part. Held so close together by their gravitational affinity, that the area of Space they occupied constantly bathed in a lovely yellow light.
Ondon Yisire, wearing the uniform of a Spacecorps general, straightened his tall frame as he noticed Perezsire’s entrance.
“Officers,” he called out, getting the room’s top officials to quiet down and focus in his direction. “We’re at Tee-minus Two nodes and thirty. This briefing is the finality to a mission that has taken cycles in the making.”
Touching an icon on the main console caused its projector to change its image. A new planetary representation coalesced into the making as Ondon commented, “By now all of you are familiar with the object of this mission: planet Mira Four.” A few more touches and the hologram of the rotating orb zoomed in to show its topography close-up. “And, Site One.”
Perezsire edged closer to the ring of admirals, generals, and fellow mission commanders. This was all rote for him by now, but he understood the significance. It would be some time before he acknowledged orders from Headquarters.
The general was going on, saying, “…each Portable Off/On-world Domicile or POD will disembark from Aidennia-System Transport Saarien out-solar group half a light-cycle and make their way in-solar group at sublight speed for touchdown at Site One approximately five nodes post-reanimation.”
The hologram conjured up three-dimensional miniatures of four saucer-shaped crafts playing out General Ondon’s narrative. It was an old story for the assembled.
“All the alternatives for the establishment of Site One have been studied, all the resources evaluated, all the hazards taken into account; moreover, the settlement plan itself has been carefully mapped out so that the site along with link-up with AST Saarien fit into the final pattern, whose purpose is to outline the landing path to Site One.”
A few more touches from Ondon and the holographic presentation converged into a sea-level view of Mira IV. The general went on, “Site One will then serve as a landing beacon for future settlements. As you know once Site One is successfully established, it is hoped to have at least ten thousand new colonists transported each cycle. Architectural plans for urban expansion and celestial map as well as astronomical alignments of the secondary sites are all pre-programmed into both Saarien and Pods.”
The topographical image shimmered and then became that of the crested javelin-shaped probeship parked amongst a myriad of celestial gems. The Miran solar group took up a position in the distance, providing a realistic backdrop.
“AST Saarien will stay stationed out-group for the duration of the terra-forming mission along with future transporter carrier convoys, acting as in-group support and HQ relay to the colonist,” Ondon said. He then turned to the line of mission commanders. “The thoughts and wishes of all Systemites go with you and yours. Oversoul speed to Mira.”
There was a brief moment where each officer clasped forearms with another, and then the ever present Orbiter 1 computer announced tirelessly, “Tee-minus Two Nodes and Twenty-Six and counting. All teams to Prepping Facilities.”
* * *
A shadow fell beside Dara Lidasiress. The ivory flash of a flight hibernation oversuit caught her attention. It was Capel Perezsire, her spouse. A fine figure of a male, he stood neatly trim, not young, yet far from old -- being only a cycle older. His face was intense and handsome, mouth sensitive, eyes dark and enigmatic. His hair was smooth, auburn brown, rather fine, with temples that had acquired streaks of gray on both sides, and he looked freshly and cleanly shaven: no mustache, no beard, and no facial affectations of any sort. Capel Perezsire was a male of controlled passions. Dara looked up and smiled. He slipped his arm around her comfortingly.
"Thought I'd find you here," he murmured in her ear. "One more look?" he asked.
"Aidennia is so beautiful."
"And just as beautiful will we find the planet around Mira." He nibbled at her ear lobe affectionately.
Her smile broadened, and she shook her head. "No, Capel. You are always dreaming things like that. You do not know what this world is really like, no matter what reports say from the automated Spacefarer Nine. It's not going to be easy."
"You have to have faith. What's the use of this whole expedition if we don't have that?"
Dara looked deeply into his eyes. "I do have faith."
"Good. You have read the reports that came back from the probes and their BioType D-8 Syntheform crews. Mira Four has confirmed findings of a breathable atmosphere, safe levels of radiation, an Aidennian-like gravitational field, a plentiful water supply, and an excellent climate. It even has a habitable moon.”
“How romantic, and promising -- a choice of two worlds.”
“Quite,” Perezsire said as he smiled. “You're a scientist; your eyes and senses have all the facts. Now we must join the others. It's time."
"Happy to oblige." She rose and thoughtfully followed behind Capel's lead.