Earth Interstellar_Proxy War

by Scott Olen Reid

  Like most spacers, the captain was hairless over most of her body to keep from inhaling a follicle as it exfoliated and floated around in the liquid environment. The only hair her genetics allowed, on top of her head, she kept under a cap. Most crew members preferred to also go bald so they didn't have to wear the caps, but the captain liked having it as it gave her some small link to being a normal human who lived in the real world.

  The captain managed a few hours relaxation time before a chime sounded in her right ear, indicating a communication request. "Go," she responded to the chime.

  "Sorry to disturb you, Captain. We've figured out the problem with the spectral flares on Engine 3. It took some swapping out of parts with Engine 2, but we've narrowed it down to a flow regulator. It's within specs, but just barely. The part’s only six months old and looks fine, but it's definitely the cause of the flare."

  "Thank you, EO. Do we have a spare?"

  "Yes, Captain. We have two in storage, not including the used one we put back in supply that has the same problem. I think we may have received the parts from a bad lot as part of loadout when we left Black Rock Three."

  "Let’s hope this one holds out. Get it swapped out. If you think there’s still life in it, make the old one a spare and we'll trade it for a new one once we're back at base."

  "Aye, Captain. We'll be ready for full engine operations in another twenty minutes."

  "Very well. Good job tracking it down, Vern," the captain replied using the EO’s nickname given to her in engineering school.

  Re-initializing full neural network immersion, the captain went back on the bridge deck. This time without activating the emotional monitoring as sometimes you really don't want to know what anyone is feeling. "Mr. Trent," she addressed the OOD upon entering.

  "Yes, Captain."

  "What's the status of the system scans?"

  "We've completed 843 passive scans of the system and compiled 143 so far. Seven planets detected, including one in the life zone, three in close, and three gas giants. Total objects-of-interest detected so far is 423,385, most of them on this side of the system."

  "That's not very many, but we're still pretty far out. Well done on identifying the planets." The objects-of-interest designation was an official catchall term used by the Exploration Service to mean any astronomical object large enough to warrant direct visual inspection and could include objects as small as a small ship or satellite, to as large as a gas giant, or protostar.

  The captain redirected her attention to Navigation, "Nav, I want a course laid out for a system plane parallel course at plus 23 million miles. Offset centerline for the closest point of approach on top of the life zone planet. Send me your course plan when it's ready." Turning her attention back to the OOD, she said, "Mr. Trent, have Weapons prepare a drone to run a mirrored course to ours on the flip side of the system plane and have it rendezvous back with us on the other side. I don't want to miss anything."

  "Aye aye, Captain,” acknowledged the lieutenant.

  Stepping over to the hatch to leave the bridge, the captain let the OOD know where she could be found. It was unnecessary to tell anyone where you would be in a virtual environment, but the captain preferred to keep life on board ship as life-like as possible.

  The captain left the bridge deck and passed through a long passage to the hatch into the commons. The ship’s entertainment and gathering room was empty, which wasn't unexpected. Looking at the commons bulletin board, she saw there were four simulation programs running that were occupied by the EVA techs doing a mandatory training course and an open dungeon crawl occupied by NT3 Becky Vitahl. In a subscreen to the dungeon crawl display was a gruesome RealPic of the corpse of a mountain troll named, "Mr. Mo'Kill." Chuckling at the sight of the splattered toon, the captain was certain it was going to be a topic of discussion for the next couple days.

  On the operations board, an advanced sensor training instance was shown as running with the Sensors Chief and two of his techs, likely sharpening them up for going through the star system they were about to enter. Not feeling like getting into a dungeon crawl herself, and seeing no other pending events, the captain logged out to get in a workout session until the ship was ready to begin accelerating on its course for crossing System 48269.

  Walking onto the bridge, the captain announced, "Captain has the Bridge."

  "Captain has the Bridge, aye, aye," came back in a chorus from the bridge crew and OOD.

  "Set navigation marker to 48269 Relative. Reference Galactic Core 000; rotation positive. Make your course, 032 by 142. Gyro-roll to reverse aspect for deceleration. Set main engines to two-thirds. Make Epson Field negative 186."

  During the rapid-fire series of commands the navigation and engineering watchstanders repeated their respective commands as they were given and the orders were simultaneously flashed on the bridge’s general announcement and ship’s status boards. The captain was pleased to see the navigator understood the need for the ship to be a black hole in space and had plotted a course that completed all acceleration prior to crossing the boundary of the star system’s heliosphere to allow the ship to coast all the way across the system with zero emissions. "Slow to point zero-two light speed, system relative, for transit."

  As the engines increased power to slow the ship, the captain felt the pressure build throughout her entire body from the increase in G-forces. The humans were able to withstand the massive acceleration due to a combination of factors: The EGGs were rigid in structure and held their volume and shape such that, unlike in the deep ocean, pressure was not coming from all sides with crushing force; also, by using the Oxy-Flo liquid environment the crew was buoyancy neutral so as not to be pressed into the side walls of their habitats and crushed during acceleration; and lastly, the Oxy-Flo liquid used for respiration did away with the last compressible gasses, allowing the human body to experience far greater pressure without harm. The end result was the humans were able to withstand the massive G-force and pressure of a hundred or more gravities and achieve the acceleration needed for travel between the stars in weeks rather than centuries.

  That does not mean the EGG Habitats were easy to live in; a human from even a hundred years ago could not live in an Oxy-Flo environment and withstand the extreme forces placed on them during interstellar travel. It took extensive genetic modification from the Human "norm" or "baseline" to allow long-term survival in a liquid environment without the skin disintegrating and sloughing off or physical exhaustion from the difficulty of breathing a liquid. Changes to skin and breathing were only the beginning of the changes required to travel in interstellar space.

  Changes to Human DNA were made to the lungs to allow increased oxygen transfer. Organs, muscles, and bones were all strengthened to better withstand the tremendous pressures and prevent atrophy during extended periods in zero gravity. Eyes were altered to allow better vision in a liquid and to the inner ear to maintain equilibrium and widen the ear canal to allow easy passage of fluid into the cavity.

  Even the Human brain was tweaked to be more capable of extended periods in isolation and to increase I.Q. Advanced math and logic intelligence were increased so that savant level math and science skills became common.

  The era of gross genetic manipulation started as a necessity for interstellar travel and evolved into a normal part of what parents have always tried to do to mold the perfect child. Only in the era of interstellar travel they began their efforts to model the perfect child while the child could still fit in a petri dish, rather than an onesie.

  Scientists spent the better part of 130 years from first contact with the Vrene trying to figure out and steal their technologies required for interstellar travel. FTL travel was a minimum requirement if humans ever wanted to become equal to their “protectors.” Unfortunately, scientists were stuck on the weakest link in space travel: human survival. The hopes placed in the development of inertia dampeners were dashed time and again. Not all was wasted, however, as humans were able to dev
elop inertia dampeners for shielding and to support the structural integrity of their ships.

  Dampeners, at least the dampeners humans developed, were great for structural support and protecting inanimate objects; as well as providing additional shielding from cosmic radiation and collisions with the dust and small objects a ship inevitably comes into contact with during interstellar travel. But, the dampener fields could not be easily controlled and, with human designs, caused significant slowing of the flow of blood and disrupted organ function.

  Unfortunately, dampening fields strong enough to protect a human from the effects of high-G acceleration also slowed the movement of everything else within the field down at a molecular level.

  The price of interstellar travel was a relatively small piece of humanity’s genetic code; exploring God's Creation was worth the price of admission. Millions of parents volunteered their fertilized embryos, their legacies, for genetic alteration to give their children the opportunity to do what they could not.

  Chapter 3: XSS Cousteau, System 48269

  "Attention all hands, this is the captain. We will be commencing our survey of System 48269 in 28 minutes. Total time for the survey in this system is expected to be six days. All recreational programs are secured for the duration of the survey. All hands are to log in to the survey system and evaluate images when not on watch or doing maintenance. Prizes will be awarded for most objects surveyed and the top three most interesting objects identified. Find a habitable planet with confirmed biomass and the entire crew gets an extra 72 hours of liberty when we get back home. There will be a pre-survey briefing in Instance Alpha in five minutes. Captain out."

  Passive system surveys were mostly automatic as large photon and particle collectors scattered around the hull and connected to quantum computers identified objects in the solar system. Objects were identified either as they dimmed the light while passing in front of distant stars in the background, called “backscatter,” or as they emitted or reflected energy onto the collectors. Backscatter analyses monitored billions of stars' light intensity and positions as the ship traversed the system and, whenever a variation occurred in a lineal pattern across a starfield background, a track line was set up. The object was then triangulated to determine its position and tagged for magnified imaging follow up by one of several powerful telescopes scattered around the hull of the ship. The survey could be automated, but computers were not always able to distinguish the "interesting" objects that needed follow up from the boring, run of the mill, asteroid that just needed to be cataloged.

  Starting its run across the System, the XSS Cousteau coasted on a ballistic trajectory course 23 million miles above the local solar system's ecliptic plane and on a path to cross directly "above" the planet detected in the system's life zone. No energy was radiated of any type from the vessel; the engines and Epson Drive were powered down and cold. Every surface of the ship, as it was on all scout ships, were designed to absorb or deflect energy away from the source, even though effective active tracking systems in space were limited to a no more than hundred thousand miles and of limited threat due to the incredible distances spacecraft travel in the time it takes for active systems to send out and receive back a reflected signal.

  Sensors Tech 3rd Class, Roberta Gold was standing sensors watch on the bridge deck and doing the same thing on watch as she was doing for the system survey for the eight hours prior. The only difference in standing sensors watch was now her job was to detect threats to the ship. The sensors station had real-time sensor data and a dedicated telescope. After verifying the various passive detection systems were clear, Gold turned her telescope to the planet in the life zone as it was currently the most interesting thing to be detected. The planet was still too far away to pick up any detail and the survey team was focused on the thousands of other images created by the quantum computers until they were closer to the planet. Taking up most of her time on the quiet mid-watch studying the planet, she made a recording of her observations and noticed something odd while running the video at different rates; a technique used on objects to identify intermittent and slow occurring events.

  "Hey Finn, can you take a look at the fourth planet? The one in the life zone?" Gold asked Weapons Tech, Finn Garry standing watch at the weapons station. As the only weapons tech on the ship, he had the worst watch standing rotation of anyone during transit of unexplored solar systems. Finn pulled up the sensor watch’s dedicated telescope into his station’s interface and responded, "What's up?"

  "I don't know. Spectral analysis says there's water, and I can see a little blue in the visual light spectrum. But I also keep seeing little sparkles of light around the edges of the planet."

  "What do you mean, sparkles? I'm not seeing anything."

  Gold was looking at the real-time image and could see there was nothing there. Not giving up, she answered, "Wait a second," and sent a feed of her recording, "Look at it at ten times speed. That's how I saw it before."

  Finn was a little confused by Gold’s suggestion and asked, "Why are you watching recordings? We're supposed to be on live watch."

  "I was bored, shut up. Just watch it." She looked at the XO's avatar to see if he was showing any reaction to Finn blabbing on the bridge's open channel that she was watching recordings on watch. "Jerk. Be quiet," she whispered to Finn.

  Finn was persistent, "Why are you…?"

  Getting annoyed, Gold cut off his question, "Dude, just watch the damn video."

  "Gold, is there a problem?" They now had the XO's attention.

  "Sorry, Sir. I was just asking Garry to take a look at the planet in the life zone. I saw something that looks like we may be getting some light refraction off the planet's atmosphere on the telescope. I thought it was odd and wanted him to take a look."

  "All right. Well, put it up and let's take a look," replied the XO, taking the opportunity to relieve his own boredom that was typical of a watch on the unpowered ship when it was coasting through a solar system with most of its systems shut down.

  "Yes, Sir." Gold put up the recording and started the fast forward, "This is a thirty-minute recording compressed into thirty seconds. The sparkles show more this way."

  The XO said, "Sparkles?" and then stopped speaking. Roberta, who was observing the XO's avatar, was the first to see his reaction when his emotional color shifted from blue to a myriad of colors in a matter of seconds. The XO, unlike most officers, did not censor his emotional status from the crew.

  Finn, not paying attention to the video, also saw the XO’s reaction and nearly activated the ship's defensive systems through his neural link on accident. He then tied the XO's reaction to the planet and looked more closely at the recording.

  Neither Gold nor Finn was getting an answer to the obvious, but unspoken, “WTH?” question they had for the XO’s reaction.

  The XO connected to the captain's channel without responding to the two watchstanders. "Good morning, XO," answered the captain after clearing her foggy brain of the deep sleep she was up until then enjoying.

  Maintaining his composure, the XO replied, "Yes, Sir. Good morning. Sensors detected what may be light reflections from orbitals around the planet in the life zone."

  "We're still pretty far away to be detecting much of anything as small as a satellite or ship,” the captain said, questioning their ability to detect anything at this range. “What are sensors reporting?"

  "They're what appear to be intermittent sparkles of light. Very dim. Gold detected them with a time compression recording of the planet."

  The captain was very much aware of sensor techs using time compression recordings to spot weak and intermittent signals from her time as an ensign when she was the sensors officer on board her first ship, the exploration ship, Integra. "Has the survey team reported anything?"

  "No, Sir. Last I checked, they were focusing outer system objects until we enter the life zone."

  "All right, notify the survey team," the captain paused for a moment, "Oh, and
Milton, I want emissions checks run on the ship. If there's something there, we don't want to be seen. What's our aspect on the planet? What are we calling it?"

  "P4. We're port aspect 315 degrees, vertical 72 degrees."

  "Use the ship's gyros to minimize our aspect. No thrusters."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  Twenty-eight hours later, the Cousteau was at its closest point of approach and it was clear humanity had, for the first time, found an intelligent alien race; rather than an alien race finding humanity first as the Vrene had done with the humans over three hundred years prior. The captain nodded her "go ahead" to the XO and the XO started the meeting, "Okay, let's get started. Xeno, what have you got?"

  Arnie Linstrom was the ship's Xeno-Technologist, a crew member every deep space exploration ship was required to have on board and fit for duty whenever entering an unexplored solar system. "Thank you, XO. Everything we have right now shows there is an intelligent race living on P4. The planet has a robust satellite presence around the planet. But, so far we have not detected anything outside of a high orbit.”

  Bringing up several new still images on the displays surrounding the meeting room, Linstrom, continued, “However, unless an object was under power, we may be unable to detect it. Their satellites are also not broadcasting in wideband omnidirectional. Neither is any source on the planet in any part of the spectrum that we have monitored. They are a black hole emissions wise."

  Surprised at the report, the captain asked, "Why wouldn't they be broadcasting? Is the planet dead?"

  "No, sir. We've just come into range for our infrared sensors to distinguish objects on the surface and there are several hundred heat sources that appear to be active cities."

  "Then why wouldn't they be broadcasting if they're using satellites?"

  "We don't know. The satellites may be using point to point narrow beam transmissions. It's terribly inefficient for large-scale distribution, but it can be done. Hopefully, we'll be able to pick up something when we get closer in."