Outcast

by Guerin Zand

  “Good morning, everyone. Since we all know each other I’ll skip all the introductions. We’ll have plenty of time over the next two months to get to know each other better. During this time we’ll be exploring a few areas in order to train all the crews on the cruiser operations. Except for a few of us, none of you have had any actual training aboard these ships. We’ll start out using only the Terran star drive at its maximum velocity of 1000 c, or a Warp factor of 7.94. We will run for two days at this speed, then use the portal drive to bring us to our first stop. That will be the Rigel system. After Rigel, we’ll continue on to Betelgeuse. Diane will be in charge of operations planning for this two-week exploration.”

  “Within these systems, we’ll work on the crews piloting, navigation, and general operations skills. We will not only make orbit around a few planets, but we will also be making a few landings. If all goes well, we’ll try to fit in a few EVA exercises. If any of our Trinix passengers are interested in an EVA just let your Captain’s know.”

  “The Voyager and Ryvius will travel together to the original destinations where we will then split up to explore different regions in the systems we are visiting. This will allow us to work on coordination between the ships over distances. When we complete our explorations of each system, we’ll rendezvous at a location before moving on together. After Betelgeuse, will use the portal drive to open a transit portal to the Helix Nebula. We’ll spend two weeks exploring this system before opening a portal to bring us close to the Trinix system. From there will switch to the star drive to approach and enter orbit around Trinix. We’ll remain in orbit until clearance to land at the spaceport is received.”

  “Temporary housing arrangements will be made for the Trinix team once we have a chance to meet with the local officials. Until then, we will all be staying on the ships in our assigned quarters. The ship crews will not be assigned quarters off the ship. This is your home. We will consider setting up a shore leave schedule for the crew and passengers once we have settled in.”

  “Now, I will address ship security. We will maintain a four-person security detail with one bridge officer on each ship at all times. The ship’s Boss will be responsible for scheduling crew for these duties. This will be the standard operating procedure for the ship’s crews for all planetary visits. While on planet, all access points will remain secured when not in use. One person will remain on the bridge at all times. Before leaving the bridge, you must be relieved if you are the only one occupying the bridge. If there is trouble, secure the ship and the ranking bridge officer will pilot the ship out of the system immediately. Any of us not on the ship are expendable, no exceptions. These ships cannot fall into alien hands under any circumstances. During the next two weeks, all crew will be trained in ship defense and emergency procedures. During these drills, all passengers are to return to their quarters and wait for the all clear. Remember your training. We don’t expect the worst, we plan for it.”

  “That’s all I have for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask your ship’s Captain after I sign off. Make yourselves comfortable. If you’re not on duty, feel free to visit the crew mess or the lounge on the upper deck where food replicators are available. Once the galley staff has time to get set up you can look forward to freshly prepared meals. There is a sign up on the ships system to opt-in for the prepared meals. Please make sure you use this so the galley crew can prepare the proper amount of food. We will also be allowing individuals to prepare their own meals when the galley is not in use. Just clean up after yourselves. If you don’t, the galley staff will talk to the ship’s Boss and, well, I think all of you are all quite familiar with the physics of flowing shit, right? We’ll be departing in 30 minutes.”

  After I finished addressing the crews, Maria came to talk to me.

  “Seriously, Dad? We’re all expendable?”

  “I don’t expect any problems, Maria, especially on Trinix, but we have to be prepared at all times. Kelly will be taking you aside to check you out with their latest sidearms and to make sure you haven’t forgotten the training you received from Steve and Katie when you were younger.”

  “Oh, that sounds like fun.”

  “It’s not supposed to be fun. Whenever Prima or Gamma are off the ship, one of us will be escorting them. Your enhancements make you just as qualified as I am when it comes to protecting yourself and others. I need you to step up.”

  “I’m not like you, Dad. Even Katie admits your enhancements are unique. I’m not a fighter or a killer.”

  “Are you telling me that you’re not capable of protecting Prima and Gamma if there’s trouble? Are you just going to sit back and pray for enlightenment, or are you going to do what needs to be done when the time comes?”

  “I don’t know what I would do, Dad. I’ve never been in that sort of a situation.”

  “You need to figure that out right now. If you can’t do the job, I’ll need to assign Ranger escorts for all of you when you’re off the ship and I’m not with you.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “That’s how I felt once, Maria. I lost your mother because I didn’t think I always needed to protect her. I could have lost you as well. I won’t let it happen again.”

  You could see Maria’s mood change when I reminded her of what happened to her mother. That normal look of annoyance she was so fond of disappeared. The sudden realization that we were in constant danger outside of the Collective protection dawned on her for the first time. There had been more than a few attempts on my life over the years. She thought those were just the result of me being reckless, but she was wrong. With humans now venturing out to the stars, the number of threats had just increased.

  “I’ll do my part, Dad. I just hadn’t thought about it and I guess it scares me a little.”

  “If something happens, we have to secure the ship. It’s our best hope to help the rest of the crew who may be on the planet. We have a lot of options to rescue our people, but only if we have control of the ship. During the training, we’ll go over several scenarios. If we’re prepared, we should be able to handle almost any situation. Don’t worry.”

  I gave my daughter a hug and we took our stations on the bridge. I was monitoring the conversation between port control and Senri as we prepared to depart. I asked her to play along with the dockmaster and not start any trouble. She agreed but made it a point to throw me some nasty looks as often as she could. We made it out to the edge of the controlled space around the Earth ship. The Ryvius and Voyager engaged their star drives.

  On the bridge, and in the lounge, we had a beautiful view of the Orion Nebula in front of us. The only thing that was instantly noticeable when we engaged the drive was that our sister ship disappeared from our view. Since we entered our own pocket universes, they were as undetectable to us as they were to any observer in regular spacetime. We could see the outside universe, but there were no stars streaking by like parked cars on the highway. Think about it. Space is really, really, really big, and there is a lot of empty space between stars. It took days to reach even the closest stars at our maximum speed. The star we were heading for gradually grew larger and brighter. At speeds above the speed of light, there was no red or blue shifting seen as you moved away from or closer to a star. The stars not in our line of flight, those off to our side, would simply increase or decrease in intensity as our distance to them changed. What you saw was those stars twinkling as we came to the closest distance and then moved out farther away. The closer stars twinkled brighter than those farther away.

  Part of navigating at these speeds was to avoid passing by any stellar body by a minimum of one light year per solar mass, the mass of Earth’s Sun. This way we avoided the strongest influences of the gravity wells associated with those stars. The same formula was used to navigate around black holes. All of the information on known stars, planets, moons, black holes, other stellar bodies and phenomena was provided to us by the Collective. You could think of them as the AAA of the univer
se.

  First, the navigation computers would plot a direct course to our destination and then see if any bodies fell within this one light year safety zone. If so, the course was adjusted to curve around that obstacle. Then the process was repeated until we had a course where no stellar body came within the buffer zone. Sometimes, depending on the path ahead, it might actually compute a course that would take the ship off to one side of the direct path at the very beginning. In these cases, instead of having to correct the course several times, it was more efficient to move off in another direction to find a more direct course. Our current path did not require any corrections since there were no other stars close to our path to Rigel. This was the most common case since, as I just said, there’s a lot of empty space in the universe.

  Traveling in our own pocket universe protected us from collisions with most of the smaller hazards in our path. Local spacetime was essentially warped around the bubble that was our pocket universe, so these small objects simply moved with the local space as we passed by. Like debris floating on top of an ocean wave. Still, this wouldn’t move a planet or other large body out of your way. Instead, it was our little universe that would be deflected like a pinball hitting a bumper, that’s if the gravity well of said stellar body didn’t throw us out of our pocket universe. This was a bad thing that our scientists had said we should avoid.

  On the other hand, while navigating our pocket universe inside a system, we could adjust our perceived mass in the local spacetime to allow us to take advantage of these gravity wells for propulsion at slower speeds. Yes, there were speed limits the scientists had imposed on us inside of a star system. I’m sure they were just suggestions though, just like those signs on our streets back in the days. These pocket universes were for all intents and purposes, an infinitesimal sized singularity in local spacetime. Although we could vary the perceived mass in local spacetime, we had to be careful with that. We didn’t want to start pulling moons and planets out of their orbits or have all the local space junk packed around the pocket universe. The perceived mass was limited to that of a large meteor or very small moon.

  Once we arrived in the Rigel system, the crew and passengers settled down into a routine. Most of the days we spent exploring and taking sensor scans of the various planets and different stars in the system. Rigel wasn’t actually a single star. It was a group of stars including binary star pairs. There were only a few bodies in orbit about these stars one could call planets. For most of the crew and passengers, this made for a rather boring time onboard.

  The lounge was a very popular spot on the ship and we normally enjoyed our evening meals there. Being bored, people started taking turns in the galley trying to outdo each other by creating something special for supper. They’d bring their ideas to Prima and she and Huiliang would round up volunteers to help prepare enough for the entire ship. We, of course, had Taco Tuesdays, French Fridays, and pizza night on Saturdays. The rest of the days of the week were always a surprise. We had people from across the globe onboard, so you could expect Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and American cuisine. For breakfast and lunch, we typically ate in the main mess hall and made use of the food replicators.

  We kept busy most of the days running drills and cross-training the crew members. Even the passengers would sit in on the various training exercises to relieve the boredom. The crew positions on the Ryvius and Voyager were not meant to be temporary assignments, and everyone knew that when they signed up. At some point we wanted every member of the crew to do any other members job if needed. Of course, the bridge training was a lot more popular than security or cargo training, but no one complained. During our time in the area of Rigel, we would often allow non-bridge crew members to pilot and navigate some of the shorter journeys. The ship’s Boss set up a schedule to rotate the crew members to bridge watch duty during the down times where we essentially parked the ship in orbit or at a stationary location.

  The Betelgeuse system was not much different. Both systems really didn’t have any sort of planets that were inviting enough to land on and perform EVA exercises. The Collective had rated these systems as not very interesting and therefore had only recorded the basic navigational data needed. Diane thought they’d be interesting to us because they were among the most studied systems in our history. She had been hoping we’d find something of interest, but the main purpose of this trip was training. These systems did have stars in a relatively close proximity to each other making them ideal for navigation exercises. The passengers spent a lot of time in meetings making up org charts and schedules for their assignment on Trinix. You know, the sort of things business types always do.

  I spent most of my time with my family. Gamma was busy with her studies and we all helped her out when needed. Maria was spending a lot of time working with Diane deciding what to explore next. The two of them really enjoyed that sort of space stuff so they were never bored. Prima and I had grown closer than ever. I spent a lot of time in the galley with her when I could. At night, well I don’t think I need to tell you what we did at night, do I?

  Like I’ve said before, I’m an idiot when it comes to women and love. I can’t explain it. One night, before we left the Earth ship, I had slipped into Prima’s room to pay her a visit. I startled her, no, I terrified her when I woke her. She panicked, and it took me a while to calm her down. I was going to leave but she asked me to stay. After all the years since she’d been freed, she still was afraid. It was then I realized how much I truly cared for her. She needed me. She needed someone she could trust and turn to when she was frightened. Seca had always been there for her, even at the worst of times. Now she was on her own and she was still adjusting to that.

  Don’t get the wrong impression. I didn’t love her because she needed me. I needed her as well. I needed someone I could trust and talk to about whatever was bothering me without having them judge me. I hadn’t had someone like that in my life since Anna.

  I had been an idiot thinking I could get back what I had lost with Milly. She was right. We were like teenagers in love back then. I was having the time of my life with Milly. I had been abducted by a hot space babe and it was a dream come true. But like we all learn about those early loves, there’s really no going back. We both had changed. Milly had grown up and had responsibilities. I was lost. Back then I had a purpose. Now, I was just going with the flow. Even this Ranger assignment was nothing more to me than a way to pass some time. Sure, I’d do my part, but I wasn’t driven like I was before.

  Anna had given me a purpose to my life back then. She wasn’t a super-hot space babe, but she was a beautiful woman in so many ways. Anyone who met her would say she was a classic beauty and she had the personality to match. Anna wasn’t the sexiest woman in the world, but when she was in the room, she was the only woman I could see. See, Anna’s superpower was happiness, and it was infectious. That’s how she got me the first time we met with nothing more than a smile. She was reserved and polite, but at the same time she would stand up to anyone. That included me when I was in the wrong. She was never harsh or mean, yet she made her feelings known. It was Anna that kept me balanced. Even after her death, it was her influence that kept me from blindly seeking revenge against the Chinese. Even after all these years without her, I was simply going through the motions of being alive.

  Gamma had been the first spark of happiness in my life in a long time. She gave me something to care about and forced me to stop with all that self-pity nonsense. It was Prima though who made me think that I could actually let Anna go. She wasn’t very skilled at relationships, yet her feelings were honest. It may sound odd, but there was an innocence to her and a vulnerability. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to get close to her. I was so scared I would hurt her, and I could never live with myself if I did. It took time for me to realize that was because I loved her. I still didn’t know where all of this was taking me, but Prima and my daughters gave me a reason to try again.

  After two months, we finally arrived
at our destination, the planet Trinix. We used a transit portal to bring us a few light years outside the system and approached the system using our star drive. Once we were within an AU of the planet we disengaged the star drive and used our standard gravity drives to approach orbit. We contacted the system controllers and received permission to enter orbit around Trinix. Before we would be allowed to land, the port authorities wanted to send an inspection team onboard to check for contraband and any bio-hazards. Since we were the first Terran vessel to ever visit Trinix, they wanted to double check that the data we had transmitted was valid. At first, I refused, but they were insistent. After a few hours of negotiation, I agreed, but I insisted that their inspectors would not be allowed into critical ship areas and that they would be escorted by security while onboard.

  Our cruisers had been equipped to accept the standard ASTN docking mechanisms. Although we could use transit portals for transferring personnel, that was Collective technology. We would not share the knowledge that we had such capabilities with anyone outside of the Collective.

  Docking between ships in the ASTN did not involve a physical connection. Outside of each ship’s docking hatch, there was a cylindrical docking collar that was one endpoint for the docking field that was created between the two endpoints of the docking ships. One ship would send a request to dock through this mechanism to the other ship. If accepted, the two ships would relinquish control to the docking system to allow the ships to be positioned and oriented before the docking field would be established. I guess the simplest way to describe this docking field is a cylindrical force field that felt solid and would hold atmosphere and travelers inside. The ship requesting the docking was responsible for providing an atmosphere to the docking field.