by Marko Kloos
“What’s going on here? Are you gambling with the crew?” I ask.
“Oh, it’s nothing like that. It’s a message in a bottle.”
I kneel in front of the plastic container and take a closer look at the metal tabs.
“We have a surplus of these drones,” Technician Fisher says. “And we had the idea to use one to launch toward Earth. You know, in case we don’t find the way out of here.”
“A radio signal would take nine hundred years,” I say. “This would take several millennia. There may not be anyone around to receive it. Not that it’ll do us any good.”
“It’ll get there after we’re all gone either way,” she says. “And then the scale won’t matter to us, will it? It’s just a morale thing. Some of the other techs thought it was weird. But I kind of like it. A piece of evidence, out there for someone else to find in the future.”
“These are dog tags,” I say.
“People have been stopping by all day to drop theirs off,” Technician Fisher explains. “They break off the bottom half and engrave it with their name and hometown and next of kin. Do you want to add yours, too? I have an electric engraving pen sitting over there.”
The deckhands look at me expectantly. Once again, I feel the burden of the command rank on my shoulders. If I spoil their fun, it’ll harm shipboard morale. If I contribute to the project, I semi-officially condone the practice, and then I may get into trouble with the skipper or the XO if they oppose it later. But I can’t really see the harm in the gesture, even if I suspect that the skipper won’t let them use the resources to send a drone full of dog tags on a ten-thousand-year journey.
“Sure,” I say and reach into my fatigues blouse to pull out my own dog tag. Some of the deckhands voice their approval.
The military tags are square stainless steel plates with rounded corners, roughly perforated in the middle so the grave detail can easily separate them if needed. I am not particularly attached to this grim piece of jewelry that will only be useful after I’m dead. They’ve changed the formats a few times over the years, and I’ve lost one or two on deployment. They’re easy enough to replace, and nobody gets into trouble for having to ask for a new one. I snap mine in half and tuck the chain with the attached half back into my shirt.
There’s an engraving pen sitting in a charging bracket on a low stack of crates over to the side. I pick it up and look for the activation button. Technician Fisher placed a sheet of thin steel the size of a mess tray on top of the crate next to the pen, and I can see where people have tried out the device to get used to the way it writes. I do the same, taking my cue from the other trial scribbles and writing my name in slow and deliberate letters until I have figured out the pen. Then I put my dog tag half down on the crate and turn it so the blank back faces up.
ANDREW GRAYSON
LIBERTY FALLS, VERMONT, NAC
HUSBAND TO HALLEY
The space on the back of the half tag is just enough for those three lines. It seems a good distillation of my important metrics, far more so than the letters and numbers on the official side of the tag that list my service number, blood type, service branch, and religious preference.
I put the pen back into its charging bracket and claim my inscribed tag from the top of the crate. The letters I etched into the stainless steel are shaky and uneven, but indisputably made by a human hand, and I’m pleased at the thought that this record will survive in my own handwriting. Maybe some future historian will find and decipher it, but it will be out there with all the other dog tags long after we’re gone, whether we make it back home or not.
I walk over to the open container and kneel in front of it again. Then I add my dog tag half to the pile that has already accumulated on the bottom, hundreds of brief hand-carved messages for the distant future. It lands with a bright little metallic chime.
“Happy trails,” I say. “I really hope someone on Earth will be able to read my handwriting in ten thousand years.”
I get up and step out of the way so the next person can add their tag to the growing pile.
“We’ll still have to get clearance from upstairs to launch that drone,” Technician Fisher says. “So those tags may never go further than this deck. But someone’s bound to find them sooner or later, right? Stainless steel lasts a lot longer than data banks do. I’ll vacuum seal the containers once they are full.”
“Tell you what,” I say. “I am heading upstairs right now. When I get an idle moment or two with the skipper, I’ll tell him about your idea and put in a good word for the project.”
“That would be wonderful,” she replies.
“The ordnance guys used to write messages on the payloads in the old days,” I say. “Maybe you can use the outside of the drone for a canvas once you’ve got the cargo buttoned up. I’m not sure what you can use for a medium that will be readable after a long vacuum exposure, but it’s a thought.”
“I’ll work on that,” Technician Fisher says. “Thanks for the suggestion. It may seem a little silly, but the crew really started to take to the idea.”
I look at the container with the pile of dog tags inside, each a shard of evidence that a living and breathing human once existed and wanted the universe to know about it.
“It’s not silly at all,” I say. “Not even a little.”
When I leave the flight deck to head for the CIC and my duty station to prepare for the upcoming scouting mission, I stop at the painted threshold in front of the forward bulkhead that marks the official deck line for reporting in. The ship’s seal is painted on the bulkhead in a five-meter-tall mural: NACS WASHINGTON CVB-63—PREPARED FOR WAR.
I turn around to look at the flight deck. It stretches for hundreds of meters, the biggest open space by far in this immense warship. As quiet as it is tonight, there are still hundreds of people out there doing their jobs or utilizing the space for training or coming down from their watch. As I take in the sensations of the place one last time before I have to head up into the confines of the upper decks, I realize that the feeling of low-level dread that has been coiling in the base of my brain since we unexpectedly went into Alcubierre with the Lanky has disappeared. I don’t know what has triggered the feeling of inner peace that has replaced that dread. Maybe it’s the acceptance of the fact that on the cosmic timescale, our existences are a blip in the collective consciousness of the universe anyway, and that I got to live my little life span with more agency and autonomy than most. I got to have a purpose and someone to fight for, and that’s more than most people get these days.
We may not make it back, I think. But even if we don’t, it will be all right in the end.
Overhead, the bell sounds over the speakers, signaling the change of watch, eight strikes of the bell rung in pairs: ding-ding, ding-ding. It’s a signal to everyone on board that the routines and heartbeats of this ship and her crew have not stopped, regardless of where we are in space or what the next few weeks and months may bring.
I turn and walk across the threshold, toward the passageway that will lead me back to my duty station.
CHAPTER 25
A SLINGSHOT IN THE DARKNESS
“It is darker than shit out here.”
It’s quiet in the Blackfly’s cargo hold except for the low whispering of the environmental controls, and we aren’t wearing helmets, so I can hear Master Sergeant Drentlaw’s softly muttered assessment clearly as he cycles through the feeds on his screens. We’re in one of the coasting stages of our dash-and-coast trajectory profile, and the engines have been silent for almost an hour. Every sixty minutes, the pilots burn the engines for five minutes to build up more velocity, and then we coast ballistically for another sixty minutes so we’re a black hole in space most of the time, with no thermal bloom to give us away or interfere with the reconnaissance sensors.
“Like sneaking through a dark cellar at midnight,” I say.
“It’s funny,” the master sergeant says. “Fifteen years in the job, and I don’t think I’ve e
ver really appreciated just how fucking empty it is out here.”
I check my own screens, which show the current feed from the passive sensor pods mounted on the drop ship’s wing pylons. The mission clock shows that we’re seventy-nine hours into the scouting run, and so far there’s nothing at all on our sensors except for a hot spot on infrared, now less than fifty million kilometers ahead. The planet that is our mission objective is looming in the darkness of deep space, huge and silent.
“We’re further away from Earth than anyone has ever been,” I say.
“I don’t think the Fleet gives out an achievement badge for that,” Drentlaw replies. “But I guess there’s one good thing about it. It means I am also as far away from my ex-wife as I’ll ever get.”
I chuckle at the joke, even though it’s a reminder that I am now as far away from Halley as I’ve ever been. The carrier is nine hundred light-years from Earth, an almost unfathomable gulf in space and time. Our Blackfly drop ship is a hundred million kilometers farther out, coasting across the space between the carrier and the nearby rogue planet, with nothing but vacuum all around us for trillions of cubic kilometers. Right now, the six of us on this ship are the most isolated human beings in the entire universe.
I check the mission timer again, where the countdown bar for the watch cycle has almost reached the end of its run.
“Ten minutes until watch change,” I say. “Do you want to rest first?”
Drentlaw considers my question and shakes his head curtly.
“I’m still riding out the last dose of go pills, sir. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll let you take the first rest and clock out when you’re done in four hours.”
“It’s all the same to me,” I confirm.
The cargo hold of a Blackfly is usually big enough for a whole platoon of troops: forty personnel and all their gear. The inside of this particular bird is a lot more cramped, but I don’t mind the tighter quarters because it almost feels cozy now. We have mission modules that can be set up in the cargo hold for various tasks, and half the hold is taken up by additional fuel and water tanks. The other half is configured for a high-endurance recon mission, a pair of surveillance workstations on the front bulkhead flanked by a galley and a separate rest module for the off-duty team members. Master Sergeant Drentlaw and I are at the controls, and Staff Sergeant Murray and the off-duty pilot are sleeping in the rest module. Looking at screens and data readouts is tiring, so we rotate the duty stations every four hours.
Drentlaw swivels his chair and unbuckles his harness.
“I’m going to warm up chow. Do you want me to throw in some for you before you hit the rack, sir?”
“Sure,” I reply.
“Any preference?” he asks.
“Just pull one at random. They all taste like crap anyway.”
“Truth,” Drentlaw says and gets up to make his way to the tiny galley space where we can heat food and refill our water bladders from the ship’s supply.
When he comes back a minute later, he puts a little food tray on the console in front of me and sits down with his own.
“Thank you, Master Sergeant.” I peel the lid off the tray and inspect the contents. “Beef lasagna,” I say and pry the plastic utensil off the bottom of the lid. “I’ve never found any beef in there.”
“You know what I hate about the mission chow the most?” Drentlaw asks. “Every time I crack one open, I get pissed off at the thought that this may be the last thing I’ll eat in my life.”
We may be fighting each other over the scraps from these things in a few months if we don’t find a way out of this place, I think. But I keep the thought to myself because I am the officer in charge of this mission, and fatalism is terrible for troop morale.
“Next burn in five minutes,” the pilot on duty sends from the flight deck.
“Copy that,” I reply.
I push my meal tray out of the way and check the sensors again. In a few minutes, the pilot will light the engines for our next five-minute acceleration phase, and then the heat and electromagnetic noise from the drop ship’s main thrusters will interfere with the sensors and make them less accurate. Trying to get a picture from only the passive systems is time-consuming and tedious. Using radar would let us map out this galactic neighborhood a lot more efficiently, but it would light us up with electromagnetic energy that would give our presence away because Lankies can sniff out EM emissions like sharks can smell blood in the water.
Ahead of us, the rogue planet is getting more distinct on infrared with every passing minute as we hurtle toward it. I cycle through the software filters on the sensors to verify the results with a pair of imperfect human eyes. Even the highly advanced recon pods have no software that can replicate good old-fashioned gut feeling. But on this sensor pass, it’s the software that catches a change in the image, something so slight that I wouldn’t have spotted it with my eyes.
“Huh,” I say. “Look at this for a second, Master Sergeant.”
Drentlaw drops his utensil into his meal tray and puts his food aside, then he leans over to see my console screens.
“Bring up the infrared image from the planet and check the latest refresh,” I say.
“Uh-oh,” Drentlaw says. He returns his attention to his own screens and cycles through the modes until he is looking at the same data.
“Sector D6 to E8,” he says. “I see it. Twenty-five degrees off the equatorial horizon.”
“And another one at thirty-seven degrees,” I say and mark the spots on the screen with a light pen.
“Think it’s our friends?”
I magnify the view on the infrared sensor as far as it will let me, but the two dark blobs that have shown up in front of the rogue planet are too indistinct to make out precise shapes.
“Maybe,” I say. “Doesn’t really look like a seed ship to me, though.”
“Computer assessment says they’re different sizes.” Drentlaw flicks through a few data fields and arranges them to get a better view of the values. “Anomaly One is estimated between thirty-four hundred and forty-one hundred kilometers in size. Anomaly Two is”—he whistles softly—“between fifty-five hundred and sixty-three hundred kilometers in size.”
“Probably not Lanky ships, then,” I say.
“Or they’re just really big ones.”
“Now that’s a cheerful thought.” I suppress a shudder at the idea of seed ships that are a thousand times larger than the ones we have seen before.
We study the heavily pixelated images on our screens for a little while and watch as the computer tries to make sense of them. We are still too far away to make out the anomalies with any degree of detail. They’re just faintly different patches of color, only visible to the sensors because they block a tiny amount of infrared radiation from the rogue planet as they pass in front of it. But the indistinct shapes and large sizes don’t point to seed ships.
“Those aren’t Lankies,” I say. “They’re moons. That thing has satellites.”
Drentlaw chews on his lower lip as he ponders my assessment.
“I think you’re right. Course, we won’t know for sure until we get a little closer.”
I toggle the button for the intercom with the flight deck.
“Flight, are we still on track for a slingshot maneuver around that planet?”
“Affirmative, sir,” the pilot replies. “We are on track for a powered flyby. Unless you spot something that suggests we shouldn’t. Just remember that we’ll triple our mission time and fuel expense if we have to wave off the approach and go wide.”
I look at the infrared screen, where the two slightly darker blotches in front of the planet are slowly moving across the magnified display section.
“Confirm we’re staying on track for the flyby, Flight. That’s why we came all the way out here after all.”
Without a nearby sun to illuminate the planet ahead of us, it’s just a dark spot in space to the optical lenses, only noticeable by the way it blocks out the f
ar distant stars every time it passes in front of one. We’re well inside of a million kilometers before the faint light from the stars is enough for the image intensifiers to make out any details. The rogue planet is just a little bigger than Jupiter, but the lack of light makes it sinister somehow, looming in the darkness like a specter.
“Those are moons, all right,” Master Sergeant Drentlaw says. “Three of ’em now. Third one just slipped over the horizon at two-thirty-nine degrees. Diameter between twenty-five hundred and twenty-seven hundred kilometers.”
“I see it,” I say and adjust the field of view on my infrared filter. The moons are now distinct on the sensor, tiny against the background of the much larger planet but close enough to our sensors to make out that they’re spherical satellites moving at the same orbital velocity, not the cigar shapes of Lanky seed ships.
“Gotta wonder how that thing throws off enough heat to be visible on infrared from that far out,” Drentlaw says. “Without a sun nearby, I mean. Figured it would be a frozen rock.”
“The universe is weird,” I say. “Gotta be internal heat. Isotope decay in the core, or tidal heating. Maybe both.”
“What the hell is ‘tidal heating’?”
I point at the moons outlined in front of the planet’s infrared image.
“Gravity. Planet pulls on the moons, moons pull on the planet and each other. You get plenty of that, you stir those cores around enough to warm them up.”
Drentlaw looks at me and smiles wryly. “You major in astrophysics, sir?”
“I’ve got two years of public college,” I reply. “Astrophysics wasn’t on the menu down in the PRC. But I read up on the colony projects, back when I was a kid. I was dead sure we’d win the colonial lottery.”
“You and a hundred million other kids,” Drentlaw says, and I grin.
“There was a book about the possibility of settling rogue planets,” I say. “Or their moons. It can be done, in theory. Only nobody’s ever seen one close-up until now.”
Master Sergeant Drentlaw looks at the optical feed, where the planet is a faint outline that looks very alien in the green tint from the image intensifier.
