Explorations: Colony (Explorations Volume Four)

by Dennis E. Taylor

  And up there in high orbit about the planet, we’ve parked asteroids and Kuiper objects to supply you with enough raw materials to get started. The rocks we flattened off as cubes are the key, as you’ve probably figured out by now. Each one… Ahhh…! Each… one has a hardened data canister with everything we know on the Blight. And nestled beside each canister is an Earthlight jewel. Treasure it. Please. It’s all that’s left of the Earth we knew.

  And… and one day, you’ll chance across a GP-13 shuttle that suffered a pressure breach. If there’s a desiccated corpse inside, treat her… treat her with respect, okay? She’s not a damned archeological curiosity. You owe her.

  And so do I.

  Not long now…

  We were… were going to narrowcast the answers to you. Give you instructions. But my daughter taught me something… to trust those who follow to know what to do. Which is why the canisters are paired with ICT-7a transceivers, massed to beam you a single word, encoded as dots and dashes.

  Hope!

  That’s the word we sent you, because there may be a way out.

  Hope!

  And I know we won’t be beaten.

  Hope!

  We’re as stubborn as mules, and keep coming back no matter how many times we get knocked down. We’re like rats, and cockroaches, and the moss that infiltrated my lawn long ago on Earth, no matter what treatment I put down, because we are all from Earth, and that’s the way we are. We are going to spread ourselves across this galaxy – and beyond one day – because that’s what we do. Captain Acualla, First Contact Fleet, out.

  Unnggh! Sorry about the coughing. Did you manage to hear what I was saying?

  Yes, Captain. Loud and clear.

  Uhh. Eyesight’s gone. Numbness spreading up my legs. If only it would reach my chest. Ahh! Because it HURTS! So… is it working?

  The comm array is already transmitting your codeword, and I’ve been streaming the account you’ve been dictating to every other canister in the network, as instructed. You did good.

  Are they ready for ultra-long-term secure storage? All encryption and access codes disabled?

  Yes, Captain. Though, you needn’t have bothered asking. I’m not some fucking UEF bureaucrat. I’m a First Contact Fleet Type-4 AI, and proud of it.

  Did I teach you to say that?

  Yes, sir.

  Guess I did something right, then. Unghh! Not long now... I shan’t say goodbye. You’re just a recording machine. A very – ahh! – important one, though. Hey! You’re not still recording, are you?

  Tim C. Taylor Biography

  The author of military science fiction and space opera series, including ‘The Human Legion’ and ‘Revenge Squad’, Tim C. Taylor lives with his family in an ancient village in England. When he was a young and impressionable boy, between 1977 and 1978, several mind-altering things happened to him all at once: 2000AD, Star Wars, Blake’s 7, and Dungeons & Dragons. Consequently, he now writes science fiction novels for a living. For exclusive free eBooks, swag competitions and much more, join the Legion at humanlegion.com.

  A Change of Plans

  By Dennis E. Taylor

  Coming out of cryo was worse than being seasick. Captain Henson groaned. He’d been seasick, back when there were things like sea cruises and vacations, and a comfortable, civilized planet to enjoy them on. The only saving grace was that this nausea would be over in a few minutes.

  He reached up and pulled his eyelids apart, loath to wait for his tears to dissolve the gunk holding them together. The casket lid was up, and his First Officer, Katherine Rougeau, looked down at him. He turned his head carefully and checked his arm. The various catheters, needles, and sensing devices had already retracted into the wall of the cryo container.

  Henson grinned up at her—tried to, anyway. He wasn’t sure if his face was working properly yet. “Someday, Kat, I’ll get out before you.”

  “In your dreams, sir.” Her tone was light, but she looked away, and Henson noticed the concerned expression on her face.

  “What’s up, Commander?” This was only their third trip out, but the arrival was supposed to be routine. Normally, the ship A.I. would place the Ouroboros in a high orbit around the target planet, then begin waking up the crew.

  Rougeau reached a hand down to help him out of the casket. She seemed to be able to shrug off the effects of cryo as easily as getting out of bed in the morning. Henson admitted to himself that he was far more average in that particular area.

  He stepped out of the casket and paused to check the other units along the wall. More than half were already empty, and the rest were in the late stages of the revival process, according to the readouts at the feet of those units. Henson shivered, even though the temperature in the cryo room was only mildly lower than normal room temperature. Something about the low lighting, the grey and almost featureless equipment, and the acoustically enhanced quiet always made him feel like he was in a morgue.

  He signaled Commander Rougeau to follow him as he made his way to the galley for the critical first cup of coffee.

  “I checked status, Captain, as soon as I was up. We’re in a solar orbit, just outside the habitable zone, rather than in a planetary orbit.”

  “What? Why?” Henson’s eyes widened as he rounded on her. A.I.s didn’t just decide to deviate from plan on a whim. Such change would only come with bad news attached.

  The commander made a couple of false starts before responding. “The A.I. was unable to identify a habitable planet to orbit.”

  Henson spent the rest of the short walk in silence, and prepped his coffee while he worked through the possibilities. He took a slow sip before replying, “We have extra-solar planetary surveys going all the way back to the early 21st, Kat. Every planet on the United Earth Foundation’s target list has been tagged by at least two independent surveys. How is this possible?”

  “I’m sorry, Captain, I didn’t get that far. Came to get you instead.”

  “Right. Well, let’s get to the bridge, and assemble the staff. First the facts, then the running around in panic.”

  *

  Captain Henson stared up at the monitor. The image showed a brilliant planet, with sunlight reflecting off a surface almost completely covered in ice. He rubbed his forehead, then swept his gaze around the bridge. The bridge staff, sitting at consoles which formed a horseshoe shape around the Captain’s chair, waited quietly for him to set the tone.

  “Okay. Mr. Kumano, report please.”

  Jea Kumano, the planetary specialist, glanced at his tablet. “I started by checking the original surveys, sir. There were three that catalogued this system as having a habitable planet. Oxygen, good temperature range, chlorophyll lines, and so on. This was supposed to be about 95% Earthlike. One of the better ones.”

  “…Which is why Pan Quantum Corporation bought it,” muttered one of the crew.

  Rougeau turned in the direction of the comment. “Belay the politics. We all have our opinions about the PQ deal, but this is no time for it.”

  Henson waited a moment for any follow-on grumbling to subside, then gestured to Kumano. “So where’s our paradise?”

  The man made a face. “That’s actually 36 Draconis IV on the monitor, Captain. Valhalla. The thing is, the surveys were done using conventional astronomical techniques, and this system is 77 light years from Earth. Sometime after that light left this system, the planet endured a global extinction event.”

  The room became quiet as the implications sank in. Kumano played with his tablet, and the image of the planet rotated and expanded. The magnified view showed a crater, clearly visible in outline through the glacial covering. “This is the most likely candidate. It’s about 50% bigger than Chicxulub. I’m speculating, of course, but it looks pretty fresh, even through the ice. It would have raised enough dust cover to lower global temps over a significant period of time. And that probably put the planet past some climatological tipping point, which stabilized as this.” He gestured up at the monitor. />
  So Valhalla is having Fimbulwinter. How oddly appropriate. Henson carefully kept his face neutral. A smile would be completely inappropriate, but his mental monologue was sometimes unable to limit itself. “Is it totally covered in ice?”

  “No sir. There’s a little open ground near the equator.” Kumano glanced over at Sachs, and Henson turned to her.

  Barb Sachs, the crew exobiologist, looked momentarily startled, as if she’d walked into her own surprise party. She recovered quickly. “Er, yes. A few patches of land have managed to stay ice-free, and some flora and fauna are surviving in those areas. Whether they’re thriving or not, that’s another question. This would have been a devastatingly quick change, and I’m sure it took down eighty to ninety percent of the biodiversity of the planet.”

  “So what’s the status of the planet in regards to habitability?”

  Sachs stared at the captain. “Sir, you can’t seriously be thinking about dropping the colonists here anyway?”

  Henson grimaced. “Ms. Sachs, you know the politics. And you know the situation back at Sol. If we come back with the PQ colonists still onboard, then Pan Quantum will either want their money back, or more likely they’ll want priority on the next ship out to the next best planet. You remember the uproar the first time. Now imagine them muscling another group out of their assigned target. Maybe a group that your families are part of.”

  People looked at tablets, the monitor, anywhere except at each other. Pan Quantum Interplanetary had been the biggest corporation in the Solar System, and they’d traded all their assets for an early colony ship and a preferred target planet. The UEF had come close to being brought down by the backlash. In a life-or-death situation, line-crashers weren’t well-regarded.

  Henson continued. “We won’t just push the colonists out the airlock without a thorough review, Barb. However, if the planet is still livable, it doesn’t matter if it isn’t the pastoral paradise that they were expecting. So, the question remains: can the colonists live there?”

  Sachs poked at her tablet for a few moments, more likely stalling for time than actually looking anything up. She met the captain’s gaze. “It’ll be dicey, sir. We’re talking about ten thousand people being dropped into an ecosystem that’s very fragile and still adjusting. If they go native right away and try to live off the land, they’ll crash the ecosystem for sure. That would be a death sentence for the entire colony.”

  “The colony supplies include enough rations for everyone for a year,” Hertzog interjected. As the landing specialist, he would have the best idea of the colonists’ supplies and capabilities. “But as a long-term thing…” He shook his head. “There’s no leeway. They have to stretch supplies as long as possible while affecting the native biology as little as possible, while trying not to starve.”

  “There will be attrition,” Sachs said.

  “How much?”

  Sachs closed her eyes and dropped her head. “Two to three thousand people, maybe, in the first five years.”

  *

  “Oh, hell no!” Samuel Jacobs, the colony project manager, glared at Captain Henson. “You’re talking about a death sentence for a large portion of our population, and a life sentence in hell for the rest! This isn’t colonization, this is abandonment.”

  “Mr. Jacobs, the UEF’s terms of service are very clear. We make no guarantees beyond the basics. Unless it’s completely unlivable, you get what you get. Every single shipload of colonists that leaves Earth faces that same risk.”

  “This isn’t every single shipload, Captain. We paid for this ship. We literally paid for this ship. We literally helped build it. We could have just built our own entirely and gone off on our own—”

  “—except that the UEF wouldn’t have allocated a planet to you—”

  Jacobs glared at Henson, but otherwise ignored the interruption. “—but we wanted to contribute to the overall effort. All the corporation asked in return was a good planet for our employees. Now you’re reneging on the deal. But you’ll happily keep the ship, won’t you?”

  “We aren’t—” Henson bit back his response. Really, this was going nowhere. “Mr. Jacobs, we’ve done what you asked. We’ve delivered you to Valhalla. If we take you back, we not only waste a thirty-year round trip out of this ship’s service life, but we will literally, since you like that word so much, be sentencing one other group to death. You know as well as I that we’ll never get everyone out-system in time, even with twice the number of ships. We estimated when we started the process that as many as a quarter of the colonies would fail. Some of the colonies are slated to go out to worlds that we know aren’t much, if any, better than this.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel good about the situation? Those colonists would go out with equipment suitable for the expected environment.”

  Enough already. Henson took a deep breath. “Mr. Jacobs, there is no leeway and there are no options. If we return you to Sol, I think I can guarantee that you will die there. The UEF will not give you another shot. At most, you’ll go to the end of the line, which is pretty much the same thing. So we’ll be proceeding with the colonization of Valhalla. You can cooperate, or you can go down to the planet kicking and screaming. But either way, we’ll be staying for three months to help with settlement, then we’ll be returning to Earth.”

  Jacobs glared at Henson for a few more seconds, then seemed to deflate. “Fine, Captain. Let me get my specialists defrosted and we’ll figure out what we can do.”

  *

  “Come.” Henson looked up as Oscar Thorne, the Security Chief, walked in and stood at parade rest. Henson gestured to a chair and Thorne sat down.

  The captain steepled his fingers. “Oscar, I have a security concern.”

  “The colonists?”

  “Yes, frankly. Jacobs ran a multi-trillion-dollar empire—well, a portion of one, anyway. He’s used to getting his way, he’s no stranger to strategy, and he’s probably in the habit of playing hardball. Should we be worried?”

  Thorne frowned. “Well, they outnumber us ten thousand to fifty. Except that we won’t be defrosting all of them at once, of course. We’ll shuttle them down in small groups, so it shouldn’t be a large risk. There are very few weapons on board anyway, and we have them all. We have the security clearances, we have control of the ship’s systems… honestly, I’m not sure what they could do, short of some kind of brinksmanship threat with a bomb or something.”

  Henson shook his head. “No, even if they pulled off something like that, their only viable strategy would be to force us to ship them back to Enceladus. We’d have Federation Marshals waiting for them when they defrosted, and they’d all spend the rest of their lives in prison. Or more likely just get sent back to Earth, which would be a death sentence. Valhalla may not be much, but it’s better than that.”

  “And that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Thorne sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “These are all white-collar workers. Executives, managers, office personnel, technical people. They were prepared to land in a mild, Mediterranean climate, and ramp up at their leisure to something post-industrial. Instead, they’ll be adapting to an ice-age climate, with limited access to resources and only the equipment they brought with them, and they’ll be spending all their time scrabbling to stay alive.”

  “Thanks a bunch, Oscar.” Henson rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Just what I need, more guilt.”

  “It’s a crappy situation, sir. We’re like dandelions, tossing seeds into the wind, hoping some of them take, and knowing we’ll lose some of them. It’s a cold-blooded approach, but the only one available to the human race.”

  Henson nodded, silent. The Solar System was doomed. Anyone still there when the Sun started its final inflation phase would be dead. Earth would be seared and parboiled, then vaporized. At that point, the only hope for humanity would be the colonies that had already been established.

  He knew that.

  It didn’t help.

>   He thought of his own family, already in cryo on Enceladus, queued up with their colony group for a chance at life on another planet. One more trip out and then he would retire and join them in the frozen wait. Then he would face the same risks as any other colonist. The same risks that Jacobs was now facing.

  *

  The PQ representatives sat along one side of the conference table, the ship’s officers along the other. It was an inevitable configuration, but still set the tone as one of confrontation.

  Well, Henson thought, that’s probably what’s on the menu anyway. Might as well get the ball rolling. “How is progress, Mr. Jacobs?”

  Jacobs leaned forward on his elbows, and interlaced his fingers. The body language projected earnestness, excitement, and supplication. Given the man’s former occupation, Henson suspected it was a deliberate choice.

  “As well as can be expected, for something we have no enthusiasm for,” Jacobs said. “I have some alternatives I’d like to talk to you about, though, Captain. Ways that we can turn this into something more than a simple scrabble for survival.”

  “All right, Mr. Jacobs.” Really, I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course they’d have been looking for alternatives. But the overwhelming probability was that those alternatives would require something from the Ouroboros and her crew.

  “We need a few extra months of your time. I mean, for the Ouroboros to hang around for a while. I estimate about one year beyond your expected departure date.”

  That might be acceptable. Barely. There would be an inquiry when they got back to Earth, but Henson could likely survive that.

  “And we’ll need to keep the ship’s fab systems when you leave.”

  “You’ll what?” Hertzog stood up, hands on the table, shock written on his face.