“You can have anything you ask. We will join you as you look up, and follow you even if you look down.”
Seth did not answer. He just thought. He remembered his escape from Earthspace, how if it had not been for several lucky breaks, he would be stardust. How could he even consider going back? He wasn’t even sure how much he could trust the Linarians. While he understood a certain reverence for Alena Heilmann, he could not fully empathize with a man who saw her as more than human. She was clearly quite human and Ironson’s willful self-delusion made him uneasy. How could he believe a man whose own beliefs were so irrational?
“How do you explain the Fall?” Seth asked.
Ironson sighed. “Why do you have to put it like that”? He said. “What you really want to know is how we reconcile our faith with what you believe is the reality of the Heilmann Drive.”
“I don’t know. Humor me.”
“The Heilmann Drive did not cause the Fall. Man caused the Fall,” Ironson said. “Alena Heilmann found God. Then we used God. We used His powers not for good, but to make money. We established these soil-cursed trade routes and abused what He gave us. Now He is punishing us.” Ironson crossed his arms. “The Fall is our Flood, Seth Garland. You are the one who has answered the call of the rising tides and you will have to be our Noah.”
*
“I realize that the old plan wasn’t working,” Lance said as he worked his console in the command center, steadying the ship after the latest leap. “But is the new plan to only go places where there are people who actively want us dead?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Seth replied. “No one wants us dead here. They want us dead on Earth.”
“Yes, but we’re only about 100 AU from Earth.”
Caitlin, who was standing near the back of the command center, couldn’t help but feel that was a lot closer than it sounded. “How far away is that, exactly?”
Seth considered how to answer her. She wouldn’t understand astronomical units, light seconds, or even the voluminous number of kilometers required to describe the distance. “About an hour,” he replied. “That’s how long it will take them to scramble their interplanetary fleet and come out here to shoot us out of the sky.”
Caitlin folded her hands together, grasping them as if holding on for dear life. “Airlanni protect us.”
The command center was quiet. None of them—not even Seth—knew exactly what they were doing just outside the Kuiper Belt. The Linarians refused to provide any more details, except to reaffirm the exact coordinates and the exact time. This uncertainty was terrible for the morale aboard the Fenghuang—which was already abysmal—and Seth decided to take action. He spun around in his captain’s chair to face Caitlin.
“I bet you’ve never seen Earth.”
Caitlin shifted on her feet. “I… I have only been off Airlann for two weeks. That would not be a fair bet.”
Seth turned his chair again, this time towards Lance. “Put up the viewer!” The screen at the front of the command center blinked on, displaying a vast starscape. The sun, Sol, was the brightest of the bright dots but, this far away, it did not overpower the other celestial bodies.
Seth stood up and walked towards the screen. He studied it, tilting his head to the side. After a minute or so, he found the dot he was looking for. He reached up, towards the screen, and pushed his finger up against a pinprick of light.
“This is Earth,” he said. “This is where we all come from.”
“You sure about that one?” Lance asked, skeptical.
“I’m the only one on this ship who grew up in this arm of the galaxy.”
Caitlin smiled. She could feel her cheeks heating up. When Seth told her what their mission was, where they would be going, she would have never imagined the effect it could have on her. Earth. The birthplace of humanity. Everything started there. Every Linarian, every Airlinnian, every man, woman, and creature in the galaxy came from that single, dim light. Only a handful of her people had ever seen Earth. Now she was one of them. Even if all she could perceive was a small amount of the light reflected by Earth’s surface… she was still seeing it. It was real.
She felt a tear building in her eye and quickly moved to wipe it away. She didn’t want any of the crew to think it affected her so much. “It’s beautiful.”
Seth returned to his seat but Caitlin kept watching the screen. She couldn’t pull her eyes away until—
“Sensors are picking up something!” Lance exclaimed. Caitlin’s heart started to race. She wasn’t ready to leap out yet, and if the People’s Republic fleet was here already they would have no choice but to leave. Would they ever come back? It was impossible to know.
“Start plotting a leap,” Seth said. “Something out of range, something far away. The Linarians will have to—”
“It’s not coming from Earth. It’s coming from outside the solar system.” Lance looked at his console. He tapped a few buttons, forced the computer to re-process the sensor data, and found that it gave him the same result.
Seth shook his head. “This isn’t possible. There isn’t another starship in the galaxy. Nothing… Nothing could survive out there.”
“I’m plotting its course and putting its destination on the viewer.” The image in the front of the command center shifted slightly, showing a different starscape. Seth, Caitlin, and Lance were silent as they watched.
A red light flickered on the right of the screen. Then they saw the ramscoop. It looked like the blade of a bulldozer, glowing crimson as it gathered and burned all the errant matter before it. Seth was the only one who recognized it. He’d seen something like it in history books. Ancient history books.
As it floated into view, Seth realized that the strange vessel was, in fact, a starship. But it was not like any starship he’d ever seen before. It was large and clunky, its surface covered with pipes and wires. The edges and corners were rusting. On the whole, it was at least five times larger than any vessel Seth had ever seen. But most importantly, there was no Heilmann Drive. There was no sublight drive There was just the ramscoop.
Seth could see something written on the side of the hull. “Lance! Zoom in on that name!” he exclaimed, pointing at the screen. Lance hit a few buttons and the view-screen focused on the name of the starship: U.S.S. Ragnar.
“U.S.S.?” Seth said aloud. “Where is this ship from?” The mystery vessel lit up as it spun around in the darkness of space. It now faced the view-screen.
“Captain,” Lance said. “It… It looks like they might be trying to communicate with us.”
“What does that mean?” Seth asked.
“They’re sending a signal. But it’s not one I immediately recognize. It’s very low frequency and—”
“It’s radio,” Seth said. He was beginning to understand what was going on, but still couldn’t get a grip on why. This ship predated quantum communications systems. It predated the People’s Interstellar Republic. It predated effective interstellar travel and the Heilmann Drive… .but here it was. “Caitlin, there’s a dial on your left. Turn it all the way down, then hit the ‘autoreceive button’.”
Caitlin obeyed his commands. Suddenly the crisp sound of static filled the command center. She covered her ears, shocked by the cacophony.
“This is Captain Seth Garland of the I.S.S. Fenghuang,” Seth said. “Please respond with identification.”
He leaned forward and waited to hear something from the static. A voice broke through the noise and rose from the chaos. “Greetings Captain Garland!” It sounded like a young man, though the radio interference was more than distracting. “This is the Ragnar. We did not expect to meet anyone here. Do you hail from Earth or Linaria?”
Seth looked around at his companions as he considered the answer to this question. Caitlin just shrugged. Lance motioned at his console as if the proper response was to leap out of the solar system and never return.
“I’m… ” He hesitated. “an independent vessel. I was asked by the Linarian gove
rnment to meet you here. But they did not explain exactly what you are.”
“Well, Captain, we—” The young man’s voice cut off. It sounded as if someone grabbed the radio from his hands. The soft sound of voices echoed through the command center. Seth could not understand what they were saying, but it was clear that a woman was arguing with the young man in charge of communications.
“What is going on over there?” Seth asked.
There was a crash on the other end of the transmission. Someone else had control of the radio. A strong, feminine voice responded to Seth’s question. “Nothing is going on over here,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s going to suffice,” Seth replied. “I don’t know what the Linarians intended, but I think we are risking our lives to meet you out here. I need to know who you are.”
“You… You’re not Linarian?”
Seth groaned aloud. “It’s a long explanation. Just tell me who you are before the People’s Republic gets here and obliterates us.”
The voice on the other end was silent for just a second as she processed this demand. “This is the U.S.S. Ragnar and I am Captain Alena Heilmann. And I am not sure why anyone would want to obliterate us.”
Chapter 3
Even after the Fall, the most popular film in the galaxy was The Call of the Darkness, the definitive biography of Alena Heilmann. No one knew how much of the story was true and how much was myth. No one really cared. The film became the truth and the truth was accepted across the dozens of planets in the galaxy.
The story was simple. Alena Heilmann was only seven years old when her father, the renowned Air Force test pilot Ragnar Heilmann, was chosen to helm the first interstellar spaceship in the history of man. This ship, the U.S.S. Zephyr, was a sublight vessel powered by a “ramscoop”. The ramscoop collected space dust, obliterated it, and used the resulting energy to power the engine. The faster the ship went, the more dust it gathered, and the more energy could be produced.
The Zephyr was capable of approaching 98% of lightspeed. That meant that, unlike other spaceships built on Earth, it could travel to other solar systems and other planets capable of supporting life.
There was, of course, a downside. Time compressed for the crew of the Zephyr as the ship approached the speed of light. To the crew, a fifty lightyear trip lasted only a few weeks. To the rest of the universe, it lasted fifty years.
Ragnar Heilmann’s flight on the Zephyr was a one way trip. By accepting the assignment, he was abandoning his family. By the time he returned—if he returned—even his seven year old daughter would be dead of old age.
The family of every Zephyr crew member received a massive benefits package from the US Government. Most of them spent the money on petty indulgences or investments that would sustain their families for generations. Alena Heilmann used the money to find her father. She attended the lectures of every respected physics professor in the world. She received three PhDs before she was twenty-five. And then she fulfilled her destiny. She built the Heilmann Drive. She made instantaneous interstellar traffic possible. She was not even thirty years old when she changed the course of human development forever.
The pursuit of safe, instantaneous interstellar travel had been Alena’s life goal. Once she developed the Heilmann Drive, she had nothing left to live for. She was aimless, and fell into despair. No one knew exactly what happened to her after that. She never built another engine. She never designed another starship. She just disappeared. The legend, as it was repeated in The Call of the Darkness, was that she built her own starship and set out to find her father, Ragnar. After all, with the Heilmann Drive, she could arrive at his destination before him.
But that was just a story…
*
Seth Garland was not a religious man. He did not believe in a God or a Goddess, and he certainly did not follow the Linarians in the worship of Alena Heilmann as a divine being. However, standing in her presence, he could feel his heart beating deep in his chest. He was filled with a reverence that he never thought possible.
Alena was nothing like the actress who played her in The Call of the Darkness. She was not small and unassuming. She did not fit the message of the film, which was that the greatest achievements come from the most unlikely of sources. She was more like the statutes on Linaria. She was at least an inch taller than Seth, who had over a millennium of evolutionary stagnation on Earth to blame for his diminutive form. Her eyes were deep, dark wells. Her hair was long, wavy, and blonde. She commanded the room with her presence, and Seth imagined that would be true even if she wasn’t supposed to be long dead.
They were standing just outside the airlock on the U.S.S. Ragnar, where the Fenghuang was docked. Alena insisted that they meet in person and Seth was unable to refuse her. Seth came without any of his crew, leaving Caitlin in charge of his ship. Alena waited at the airlock to greet him They were alone, together, and that tension was almost too much for Seth to handle. Even as he went to greet her—to shake her hand, which he was sure was still the custom when she left Earth—his whole body was trembling.
“I don’t even know what to say, Ms. Heilmann,” he said as they clasped hands. It was electric. He was touching the woman who gave humanity the power to spread across the galaxy. “You’ll forgive me if I never planned for this moment. I thought you were—”
Alena sneered. “You thought I was dead. I rather liked it that way.” She pulled her hand away from Seth. “Now, I have to know. How did you find me? Who told the PIR about my waystation? If it was one of my crew, I’m throwing him out the airlock and you can’t stop me.” Seth was stunned. He tried to understand what she was saying, but none of it made much sense to him. Alena picked up on this uncertainty and pounced. “It’s not the PIR anymore, is it? No more People’s Interstellar Republic? Can’t say I mourn it. Sorry about the confusion, it’s been about a hundred of your years since I picked up any news from Earth. I just saw one of my ships out there and figured you were with those bastards.”
“I’m not with the PIR. I’m actually a private enterprise. I think I’ll need to explain some things to you.”
Suddenly, Alena smiled. “They’ve finally stopped regulating the engine! It’s about time! I knew no one would use it as a weapon and—”
“That’s… ” Seth’s voice trailed off. He sighed as he realized what had to come next. He was going to have to explain to her that her engine was now against the law, banned as a threat to the entire universe. She didn’t look like she would take it well. “I actually have some bad news.”
The color drained from her face. It was almost like she expected it. Seth did not wait to sit down, or to re-join either Alena’s crew or his own. He just blurted it out, right there in front of the airlock. His starship was the last one left. It was outfitted with the only Heilmann Drive that was not destroyed after the Fall. And the only reason it still existed was because he stole it. It hurt for him to tell her all of this, especially since he had so many questions for her, but he plowed through with the events of the past year as quickly as possible.
Alena did not stop him. She just listened. She did not speak until he reached the end of his story, the trip to Linaria and the request to come to the coordinates that turned out to be her waypoint.
“I don’t know what to say,” she told him when he was finally done. “Everything I created, everything I was so proud of… It wasn’t something creative. It was something destructive. It was something horrible.”
“It wasn’t something horrible!” Seth said. “An entire galaxy has you to thank for its prosperity.” He could see that this wasn’t enough. He’d never expected what was happening. Alena Heilmann was not immediately outraged about the Fall. She did not feel as he did, that it was an irresponsible and idiotic reaction to an invisible threat. No, instead she was worried. She was worried about what her invention had wrought.
“It’s been forever for all of you.” Alena said. “But for me it’s only been… it’s only been a few years. Th
e compression engine… it’s part of your culture, it’s part of your history. It’s part of my memory and my present. Your societal upheaval is my recent personal failure.”
“The compression engine? We call it ‘The Heilmann Drive’.”
“Don’t.”
Seth reached out, as if to hold her arms and comfort her. But he could not bring himself to do it. He could not bring himself to touch Alena Heilmann. She was something beyond human, something legendary, something that should not live and yet did.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she exclaimed. “You’re like the Linarians. I’m just a human! I’m just… I’m not anything like what you think I am. I just—”
“You’ve just been alive for the last two thousand years,” Seth interrupted. “What am I supposed to think?”
“That I’ve spent all but a few weeks of that time just a hair away from light speed. It’s not magic. It’s physics.”
“But why? Why fly around in an ancient starship and just watch time pass?”
Alena shrugged. Her shoulders slumped. “Because I was curious. I wanted to see what would happen. I began by flying between Earth and Linaria—one of the first planets we settled—and skipping fifty years at a time. Then the Linarians expected me. I started taking a few of them with me. They wanted to leap across time, they wanted to be like me… ”
Faster Than Light: The Fallen Goddess Page 3
