Her lips were set in a tight line and she glared at them in turn, especially Martin who had asked several detailed questions, leaving Daniel gray-faced and gasping in pain as he tried to answer them.
By the end of the testimony, they had hashed out every possible second of the day in question. Medry’s testimony implicating Zradce as the saboteur was unnerving and disturbing. They were still digging, trying to determine motive. And Zradce was in a coma, showing minimal brain function. Who knew if he would ever wake up, much less be able to defend himself?
His wife had testified. She had been the lone voice of support of her husband, confused beyond measure and in denial.
Daniel staggered back to Medical Bay, exhausted, held up on each side by the men who had escorted him to the tribunal. He was relieved to return, too weak to do anything more than sleep.
Captain Aaronson had entered the final piece of evidence after Medry was led away. Just three words, at the end of a straightforward report on some electronics maintenance. Zradce had apparently stuck it in the document almost as an afterthought...
Mother was right.
Ellie Satler looked at the report, “What did he mean, ‘Mother was right?’”
Aaronson shook his head, “It was a standard report from five months ago. No one even noticed it until we were reviewing every report Zradce had filed.” He gave a short, bitter laugh, “I doubt anyone had ever read it all the way through. I sure as hell hadn’t.”
The captain closed his eyes and when he opened them, they looked haunted, even guilt-ridden, “What if the crop failures, and the Environmental glitch weren’t random? Could Zradce have been behind all of this?”
“It would mean that he had meant to kill his own wife, sir, along with the rest of the crew.” Martin Phoenix said quietly, his eyes brooding over the concept.
“We need to know why he would do that. Has there been any luck in decrypting his personal logs?”
The captain shook his head, “Not yet. Zradce specialized in security, which could be how he managed to stop the Command Deck override protocols and initiate the system reset in Cryo. Medry certainly doesn’t have the background for that. We have techs working on breaking through the encryption. And there was also a request sent to Earth for any additional family records.”
“Other than that, there is nothing in his personnel records beyond the information you have in front of you. Earth won’t be able to respond for a long time and we have heard from Zach Jenkins and Wes Perdue on what they saw upon entering the Cryo Deck. As for the computer terminal used to enter that particular string of code that overrode the environmental controls, well, it was a station he used, along with one other crew member.”
“And the other crew member?” Ellie pressed.
“The other crew member, Lloyd Bruehl, is one of the dead.” Fenton looked at the others, “I think we all know who was responsible, even if we can’t understand why.”
Martin Phoenix shook his head, “I wonder if it even can be understood.”
Captain Aaronson returned to his tablet, looking up at the three members of the tribunal, “Is the tribunal ready to render a verdict then?”
All three nodded. He double-checked the viewscreen in front of him, it was still recording, as it had been the entire day through each of the testimonies.
“Well, let’s do this formally then. Martin Phoenix, First Officer aboard Calypso and member of the tribunal, what is your final judgment?”
Martin answered, “I find Nathan Zradce guilty of sabotage and murder.”
The Captain nodded and moved on to Ellie Satler and finally Jackson Sebring. Their answers were unanimous.
Nathan Zradce had been found guilty of sabotage and the murder of five innocent crew members.
Aftermath
“Happiness and strength endure only in the absence of hate. To hate alone is the road to disaster. To love is the road to strength. To love in spite of all is the secret of greatness. And may very well be the greatest secret in this universe.” – L. Ron Hubbard
Date: 02.12.2104
Calypso Colony Ship
Calypso had never seen as many people on its decks as it did in the weeks that followed. The coffins were full, the couples’ billets were at capacity, and voices could be heard throughout the decks no matter the time of day. It seemed that even the soundproofing on the coffins and billets was sorely tested, and tensions began to run high. What had once been a rather quiet ship was now a noisy, bustling place. The quiet out of the way places had been invaded by the newly revived and the first few days of joy at having been saved from dying, dimmed to feeling cramped and edgy.
“Just eleven days to go.” Daniel said, running a hand along Sam’s body. They were both inside of his coffin, and despite the sound dampeners could hear a loud argument going on outside of one of the ready rooms.
“It can’t come soon enough,” Sam groaned, “I had forgotten how much I dislike crowds. I feel like I can barely breathe.”
Outside the women continued to yell, one insisting that the other had taken a full immersion shower just two days ago. With the entire crew of the Calypso straining all resources, full immersion showers had now been limited to one per week. This hadn’t been a popular decision, partly due to the smell that quickly filled every corridor and public space.
“Wow, listen to those two go.” Daniel laughed. It sounded as if several others had gotten involved, raising the volume in the hall significantly.
“The number of arguments has risen in tandem with the stench.” Sam sighed.
There had been two fights, one broken nose, and Medical Bay was filled with an endless stream of supplicants in search of everything from condoms to sleeping pills.
“Carrie is ready to throw in the towel and tell them all she’s going to become a hermit,” Daniel snorted. You should have seen the line of people outside of Medical Bay this morning. I think Carrie gave me a clean bill of health just so she has one less person in her face. Not that I can blame her.”
He shifted, a small grunt of pain escaped his lips.
“Did you hear about Zach and Laney getting together?” Sam’s fingers traced his injuries, her touch was gentle. “They were the ones who tracked down the piece of code that Zradce wrote which altered the temperatures in the ‘Ponics Deck.”
“Yeah, I remember Zach.” Daniel said, pulling Sam on top of him, his mouth on her neck, “He thinks he is close to cracking Zradce’s encryptions. That will make the tribunal and the Captain happy. Zach said there was another possible issue with the Environmental systems. They ran diagnostics everywhere after the sabotage on Cryo and some weird codes came up that didn’t make any sense.”
“I saw her taking a shower two days ago!”
The voice was strident and the speaker had apparently moved, now standing directly outside of Daniel’s coffin. Other voices joined hers, but not in agreement.
“Would you damned well shut up? I’m trying to sleep in here,” came the muffled voice of another crew member.
Sam and Daniel began to laugh, their potentially intimate mood broken.
“Like I said...”
“Eleven days can’t come soon enough.” Daniel finished for her. “I am right there with you, love.”
The ship-wide meeting of all crew members was held the day after the Cryo sabotage. Daniel had missed it, but Sam had filled him in later.
“No one wanted to return to Cryo, not after the sabotage.” She had told him, holding his hand as he recovered in Medical Bay. “Lowry made it clear that the impact on the food stores would be significant. They have enacted measures to reduce the caloric consumption for all adult crewmembers to fifteen hundred calories per day. Anyone younger than eighteen will be allowed their full caloric allotment.”
The deaths had been difficult. Of the seven pods that Wes had initiated the emergency sequence on, only two of the occupants had made it. Simon Dunn-Edmonds, aged four years, had been pulled out just in time along with Jennifer Zradce.
The last five, trapped inside of the pods and only half revived, had run out of oxygen and suffocated by the time the system reset completed and the locks had released. It was a design flaw that the engineers of Calypso had overlooked, a weakness that Zradce had discovered and exploited.
The five dead, one woman, one fifteen-year-old girl, and three men were mourned. Each of them had been talented and gifted, and their absences were a giant wound that had no time or space to heal. For those who had been in Cryo for the full voyage, the news of Earth came as an additional shattering blow.
Outside of Daniel’s coffin, additional voices could be heard. They had recently deputized eight of the crew members to serve additional peacekeeping duties on Calypso to help ease tensions and quickly subdue arguments. Two of them seemed to have arrived and the voices quieted.
“How’s Kit doing?” Daniel asked. Sam and Kit were spending time together, more so now than ever, as Kit worked through the loss of Deeks.
“She went to Carrie the other day and put in a formal request from A.R.C.” Sam said quietly. “She asked for Deeks’ sample.”
Nearly everyone on board had submitted to egg or semen sampling before departure. Duplicate samples were stored on Earth as well as in A.R.C. on board Calypso. In a way, it was a taste of immortality. If something happened, and their lives ended, some part of them would still remain. The “just in case” was suddenly very much a reality.
“Wow.” Daniel turned it around in his head, thinking of his friend, wishing for the hundredth time that he had arrived just a few minutes earlier.
“What did Carrie say?”
“She said it wasn’t up to her. So Kit went to the Captain.”
“And?”
“Cap thought about it for a day, talked to Carrie and Carter and gave her the green light.” She sighed, “They were really into each other, so who knows, it probably would have happened if he had made it.”
Daniel nodded, mostly to himself. It would have. He’d known Deeks had it bad, and from the way Kit had responded to him at training and before departure, he was sure the two would have hooked up.
“It just seems like a lot for her to take on. Being a mom all on her own, with the colony just getting started and all.”
Sam shook her head, “She’s tough. It’s devastating to her, losing Deeks like she did, but I’m telling you, the minute she got word from the Captain, she was down in Medical like a shot. She said she’ll be implanted next week and I swear, Daniel, it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile since waking up in Cryo.”
She added, “Did you know he named her in his will? All of his personal effects, he willed them to her just two weeks after she had gone into Cryo. It included a personal log full of notes written to her counting the days until they were back together.” She sighed, “So damned romantic.”
She groaned, “Oh, and did I tell you about the rumors that are being spread? Some are trying to say that the ESH virus and reports of the widespread deaths on Earth are lies.”
“What?”
“Oh, and that these false reports are being used to push a misogynist agenda and force women to abandon their work in order to bear large numbers of children.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Kit and I are working together to try and touch base with each of the women. We are asking them to consider having children just until the kinks in the artificial wombs had been worked out.”
“How long will that be?”
“Well, Martin Phoenix seems to think it should be soon, but I don’t know. They have a team working on it now.”
“I’m not romantic enough, am I?” Daniel asked Sam, hoping to try again now that the commotion outside had dissipated.
“You have your moments.” She smiled, “Would it be terribly un-romantic to tell you I have an appointment next week to get knocked up?”
“What?”
“I want kids. You know that.”
“Yeah, but.”
“Not all of them have to be yours.” She said cheerfully.
Daniel’s hand fell away, “Okay.”
Sam laughed then, “From A.R.C., silly. What, did you think I meant someone on board?!”
“Um, okay, yeah, for a minute there I did.”
“And?” she asked.
“And what?”
“Is it a problem?”
Daniel paused and thought for a moment. He thought of his son, Toby. He imagined the Earth, empty, the cities filled with the dead. He could see Deeks face, along with Kit’s, Luke’s, Janine’s and so many countless others. Life was so tenuous, so fragile.
This life that they were heading towards. It was full of unknowns. The probes continued to stream data about Zarmina’s World and they had learned so much in the past few months as the ship slowly decelerated and the planet steadily grew in size, filling the view screens with their future.
Sam’s voice interrupted his thoughts, “You aren’t okay with it, are you?”
Daniel pulled her close. “On the contrary. I find it kind of sexy. New life on a new world. It is your body, Sam, and just know that I will be honored to be called Dad by any and all of your children if you are willing to have me. I know it took me a long time to figure it out, but I’m glad I did. I’m in love with you.”
The next day, Daniel was honored in front of the entire assembly for his heroic efforts. He still moved slowly, his wounds had not completely healed, but he was recuperating quickly.
After the ceremony a petition had been circulated asking for the Zero Protocol to be enacted in the case of Nathan Zradce. Daniel had been asked to sign it and several were shocked when he refused. Several of the officers had signed it, including Jackson Sebring and Martin Phoenix, but in the end, Captain Aaronson had refused to sign off on the order.
“I’ll remind everyone that Zradce’s body remains in excellent shape and Dr. Schrader has informed me that Zradce’s organs have potential value should we need them at some time in the future. As for his taking up of valuable resources, his consumption is minimal. I will revisit this decision in six months after we have established Sagan Base.”
The decision was a sound one, since the technology for growing organs would have to wait, possibly years, for the colony to grow and create a hospital facility that could handle the more complicated procedures.
The oceans were a deep blue-green, the clouds were white, and along the meridian of this tidally locked planet, they could see their futures unfolding. Zarmina’s World was nearly twice as large as Earth, and the meridian, where they would soon make a home, was unimaginably large. With more than 5,000 kilometers in width, and a north/south length of nearly four times that to choose from, the Landing Committee had focused on a handful of potential sites. They all had water sources, a good mix of prairie and forest, and mountains in the distance that supplied fresh water. There was ample evidence in the low foothills in several locations of the necessary variety of ores and mineral deposits that they would need in the years and decades to come.
The drones they sent out captured dizzying views of massive waterfalls, sharp mountain peaks, endless valleys, even high mountain deserts in the southern region. In the northernmost part of the Meridian was an incredibly tall volcano, cloaked with drifts of snow at its base, with a scattering of green mixed with the black of hardened lava along its flanks. Several immense freshwater lakes held the promise of untold plant and marine life within their depths.
There was so much to do, so much to explore, and the final days aboard Calypso were consumed with in-depth debates over the best site for Sagan Base, the layout of said encampment, and logistics and planning. An enormous, untouched, unexplored world lay within reach as Calypso entered its final deceleration and established orbit around the enormous world.
There was a large inland saltwater sea that had been on the short list of possible destinations. As the ship passed over mountains, oceans, valleys, and forests, the Landing Committee continued with its final deliberations. It was almost
time to leave Calypso and finally set foot on Zarmina’s World.
Planetfall
“Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is intelligent life in outer space is the fact it hasn’t come here. Well, it can’t hide forever – one day we will overhear it.” – Arthur C. Clarke
Date: 04.24.2104
Zarmina’s World – Unexplored Territory
Daniel Medry stood at the edge of the precipice and looked down. It was at least one hundred meters to the nearest outcropping of rocks, and another one hundred after that before solid ground. On his left, just four meters away roared an enormous waterfall. The water was cold, spray flecking the ground and, when the wind shifted, he was immersed in the fine mist. The vials of water samples in his pocket would be studied by Sam when he returned. She was currently testing the responses of the imported Terran plants in the planet’s native water supply. So far, the water seemed the same, although it tasted sweeter than he remembered Terran water tasting. Perhaps it was simply a vast difference from the canned, recycled water they had all been drinking for the past five and a half years.
He was tired, they all were. Sleep was a luxury they could ill afford, however. There was an endless amount of things to do and a short amount of time to get it done in. Every day since planetfall it had been a bustle of activity, every waking moment filled with projects and tasks. Each colonist was bombarded daily with an alien biology, botany, and environment along with a healthy dose of problem-solving. No matter how detailed the plans had been, the unknowns popped up to bite them when they least expected it.
There had been enormous boulders just under the soil that interfered with the installation of posts and fencing. The housing engineers had had their hands full with several freshwater springs that popped up in the middle of a row of houses just three weeks after the occupants had moved in. This had flooded the floors, ruining some belongings. And those were just two of what appeared to be an endless parade of problems challenging them as the colony settled in.
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