The Pathfinder Trilogy

by Todd Stockert

  “I hope you do,” he said. “Murder is against God’s commandments… they… we… simply chose to ignore that particular one. And the Triumvirate regularly chooses to ignore God altogether.”

  “Three,” she continued. “If there is ever to be a chance for peace between our people and yours it must begin with someone like you. I would imagine that you’re going to get a few more bumps and bruises before this is over but your willingness to cooperate and contribute positively to our efforts signals to the Captain that it’s worth his while to offer you the chance to redeem yourself. I just hope that you understand that your access to the critical areas of this ship and its resources must remain limited until we can absolutely guarantee that any possibility of Brotherhood brainwashing has been completely purged from your mind.”

  “Your people and this ship have purged me,” he countered, actually smiling for the first time in a long while. “The transceivers like the one found in my quarters can stay on permanently or upload and download data in quick bursts as other Brotherhood agents passed by the moon aboard other space-going ships. The shorter transmissions, if detected, are carefully encrypted and designed to appear as random static. That connection which kept me informed, up to date and obedient was terminated the instant we left our home galaxy.” He shrugged. “A lifetime of training stuck with me for a while, like the urge to sabotage the ship by building a bomb. But once those hallucinations began they became so powerfully strong that I was overwhelmed with the emotions that had previously been repressed, and it didn’t take long before I realized my actions were now being driven by a feeling of revenge instead of a preconditioned obligation to obey. That was when your marines caught up to me, in the midst of my emotional confusion.”

  “With emotional feelings you have options,” she said, smiling back at him. “You can give in to them and allow them to control your behavior…”

  “Or not give in to them…” he decided, looking elatedly at her.

  Dr. Simmons carefully took a few minutes to add to the notes she had been writing down as they talked. “Eventually I’m going to have you begin sessions with my colleague on board, Dr. Hagen,” she said. “He’s a trained psychiatrist, skilled in the psychology of the human mind and he will be able to help you deal with those emotions that continue to be triggered by things that you cannot go back and change. It will take time, but you’ll learn to live with them.”

  “Without my conscience telling me that killing others is a bad idea and just having that feeling automatically shunted to a part of my brain where I can’t feel it anymore?”

  “Exactly like that,” she said. “But we won’t schedule any sessions with him until I think you’re ready. Right now you’re continually experiencing the full onslaught of all-out human emotion and that is quite simply the best experience for you right now. You could have killed Mr. Dandridge, or any of the others that attacked you, very easily but you didn’t. You’ve put up with a great deal of harassment.”

  “Because I chose not to give in to strong emotion,” he said, smiling at her again. “Because I allowed my conscience to decide the difference between right and wrong and restrained myself.”

  “Correct,” she said. “But I’m glad you pasted that loudmouth at least one decent shot. You do have a right to defend yourself when attacked, you know.”

  “I know,” grinned Patrick, pointing to some of the other cuts and bruises on his face. “I’ve been getting lots of practice at that, lately.”

  They both laughed for a moment. “Humor is a very positive sign,” Karen said, carefully placing her pad and pen on the table next to her. “I’ve been using my own judgment as to which parts of our conversation the Captain and others need to hear about,” she continued. “No one else but you on this ship can possibly understand what you’re going through, so I’ll do my best to respect your right to privacy where possible. But I’d like to warn you up front that it may not always be possible in all of the situations that we will address. I want to save my people from further attacks by yours as much as everybody else on this ship does.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment. “I appreciate the up-front warning, Doctor.”

  “I also want to explore on a personal basis just how far this ‘programmed’ part of you goes. The type of preconditioning that you have talked about suggest that there could be time delayed commands within you that can ‘snap you back’ – as you put it – without your foreknowledge. So that will be the topic of our next conversation. Are programmed responses now permanently a part of your thought process?” She leaned forward with a very sincere expression of concern on her face and turned off the tape recorder. “Okay,” she said. “That’s what we will discuss next time. Right now I want to hear some more about the dreams that you’re still having, Patrick…”

  Dr. Simmons was still working later that day when the Captain stopped by. She pushed aside the microscope she had been using along with its sample of the bacterial infection that was still causing occasional hallucinations among the crew. Kaufield looked tired but in control, and she was glad that he had accepted her offer to stop by for a few minutes to visit. She handed him the cassette tape of her latest interview with Patrick Warren and he tucked it into his shirt pocket.

  “Have you apologized to Noriana yet?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “It took me a week but I finally admitted that I don’t think the kid she’s carrying is more important to the survival of our people than she is.” He sat down in one of the empty chairs. “It was a good apology too. She even hugged me.”

  “Pregnant women are more likely to hug irritable Captains who say stupid things then… say… someone like me would be,” Karen suggested. “It’s the extra hormones and such…”

  “Hey, we agreed that she was no longer commanding the fighter squadron until well after her kid is born,” said Dennis, looking at the Doctor with a little apprehension in his voice. “It’s too easy for a fighter to get picked off in battle – we would have lost two people.”

  “She’s the toughest pilot on board and she wanted to assist in the effort to defend her ship,” Dr. Simmons said. “Both of you are right… that’s the way it is in life sometimes.”

  “Can I go now?” he asked. “Or have you got an entire speech prepared?”

  “Depends…” replied the Doctor. “You can tell me what’s really been bothering you or you can tell Dr. Hagen. I can schedule an appointment for you if you want.”

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked. “What else would be bothering me?”

  “He has two openings tomorrow morning and one in the afternoon.”

  “The battle we fought last week, what else would it be?” Kaufield finally admitted. “It’s been eight days already and I still wake up at night after a good solid nightmare, sweating and shivering. Considering all that we’ve been through I expected that to be the very last of all the decisions I’ve made that would stick with me.”

  “Do you have any ideas as to why that particular incident bothers you?”

  “Because that battle included the first moral decision I made that I really feel deep down was an incorrect one.” He looked at her and smiled. “We received a lot of telemetry on that enemy mother ship right up until that final instant our Canary Probe rammed into it and we transited to a new location. All the numbers were right there on my Delta console. Speed, distance, time to impact… all of it. They weren’t going to collide with us before we could transit. I knew that but I ordered the collision anyway… because I was at that instant very angry and wanted to see those bastards who tried to take our ship suffer for their murderous behavior.” She noted the mixed emotions in the expression on his face with a bit of concern. “Technically we were trespassing in their territory,” he commented. “Although even if you don’t speak someone’s language there’s always the common sense option of firing a few warning shots. They wanted to capture the Pathfinder.”

  “It would have been an irreversible disaster if this
ship had been boarded,” Karen said softly. “A lot of people would have died and it’s very probable – according to a lot of the officers and not just you – that we would have lost the ship. Those alien people did everything they could to catch us by surprise and overwhelm us before we had time to react, so there are bound to be some strong emotions generated when the enemy shows that kind of contempt for other life. They were deliberately intimidating and you reacted to their posture instinctively.”

  “Those people have been fighting each other like that for over forty-five thousand years,” Dennis pointed out. “They probably don’t even remember a time when they got along with their enemies. When you combine that kind of revelation with the surprise nuclear holocaust the Brotherhood unleashed on Earth, something inside of me finally snapped. I wanted to lash out and make a point to somebody – anybody – that we’re not just going to sit back and take beating after beating without fighting back.”

  “But…”

  “But we had lashed back and them. The maneuverability of our fighters and the rail guns on those shuttles totally caught them by surprise. We whacked them a good one,” he said. “And then I murdered dozens, maybe hundreds more of those alien people, because I was sitting up there in the Command Dome really pissed off. I admit it, I judged them right there on the spot and appointed myself their executioner. Shouldn’t a starship Captain be above that?”

  “You rely on your instincts during combat, just like any other officer,” Karen pointed out. “Did you read the intelligence report on the Canary Probe’s telemetry?”

  “Of course I did. The power source in the mother ship was undoubtedly from one of those weapons they’ve been using against the stars in that wasteland of theirs. Destroying the ship probably saved an entire star system… at least until a replacement arrives to take its place.”

  “Thanks for confiding in me,” she said. “As long as you’re talking these things over with someone and not keeping it all packed tightly away inside of you then there’s no need for me to recommend an appointment with Dr. Hagen. Everyone on this ship follows the same rules, remember? That’s what you told the Council.”

  “I’m the Captain and I did say that,” he said. “During a time of such extreme challenges, anyone who trusts and relies solely on his own judgment will not last long in a leadership position. This is my ship, I’m proud of it and her crew and I plan to stick around.”

  “Yes, and you’re also a flawed, emotional human being just like the rest of us. So go be one and don’t worry so much that your performance during this one crisis wasn’t perfect. That would be a bad example to set for Joseph. Forgive yourself and move on.” She paused, watching him stand up.

  “I tell ya… it’s been one of those days already, Doc,” he said.

  “For what it’s worth, Captain, I heard about the CAS Drive problems during the battle. Thomas said he pulled every trick he knew and then some to get it working again. That was a completely unexpected and unknown situation that he managed to resolve successfully during a time of crisis. But we have the benefit of hindsight. Even with all preliminary data indicating that our systems were back on-line and functional, I doubt that I would have risked the ship by assuming that we could transit away in time to avoid a collision. I would have rammed the Canary Probe into them too and I’m a Doctor, dedicated to saving and healing life. Sometimes there are simply tough choices that must be made in a command position such as yours. We support you Captain, because you are a good man and have worked so very hard to keep us all safe.”

  “Thanks for telling me that,” he replied, pausing in the doorway. A look of curiosity flashed across his features and he pointed at the microscope. “Haven’t you found a permanent cure for that hallucinatory bacterial thing yet?”

  “Nope,” said Dr. Simmons. “Haven’t you found a way to go back and reconquer Earth and get us our home back?”

  “Touche,” he said, touching his forehead in a quick salute before vanishing out the door.

  *

  From: Thomas Roh

  To: Captain Kaufield, Council Members, & Supporting Staff.

  Subject: Dark Matter and the problem it poses to the Pathfinder’s CAS Drive.

  This E-Note memo has been written specifically to provide useful background information to the average crew member who is not familiar with the ins and outs of basic quantum mechanics and astrophysics. During our recent journey through the star-damaged wasteland, the Pathfinder’s CAS Drive was temporarily unable to function as it has so well for us the rest of the time during the two months we’ve been away from our home. This malfunction was due to the unexpected – and thus far unexplained – presence of higher than normal levels of “dark matter” in the vicinity of that particular Galaxy’s fourth spiral arm.

  Dark matter is, by simplest definition, non-luminous (or invisible) material that is not normally detectable by conventional means such as the measurement of electromagnetic radiation.

  Its presence is, however, a reality that we have confirmed by using non-conventional observational methods and through calculation parameters used to keep the artificial singularity powering our CAS Drive working in unison with our PTP transit system. Dark matter is normally completely undetectable to the casual observer – of which I am one. I have spent the past week working with both our Lab and Observatory staff in order to more accurately detect and catalogue this most fascinating material that comprises the largest part of all mass within our universe.

  Our home galaxy rotates faster than it normally would based upon measurable gravity generated by stars, gaseous nebulae, and the other visible objects that comprise it. Using that as a basis for exploration our ancestors back on Earth were able to theorize and prove the existence of a supermassive black hole – or gravity whirlpool – at the center of the Milky Way around which the spiral arms rotate. Matter (like our home solar system) spinning fast enough to avoid being pulled in by the gravitational turbulence at its center maintains a stable orbit around the outer event horizon and comprises the stars in the spiral arms just as we have observed them over the past two months. The remaining matter and light energy, the stuff that’s not so lucky, is relentlessly pulled in and devoured by the black hole.

  In recent years our Observatory specialists have confirmed that virtually every galaxy in the universe has one of these supermassive black holes at its center. The size of each varies in direct proportion to the size and amount of stars contained within its star cluster. It was initially very difficult to confirm the presence of black holes in our universe since everything (including visible and non-visible light energy) is sucked into its correspondingly huge gravity well. Black holes solve one piece of the dark matter puzzle – with their existence verified we have found the source of at least some of the extra gravity causing the galaxy clusters to spin faster than they normally would were they composed of visible, detectable matter alone. Many astronomers now believe that over 90 percent of the matter in a typical galaxy is completely invisible using conventional observatory and detection equipment. Obviously, that which we cannot see using normal methods is one of the primary difficulties we face when trying to correctly calibrate the CAS system and keep its reactions to unpredictable gravity fluctuations under control.

  Recently the Pathfinder visited the Centaurus super-cluster. There are many of these “super-clusters” scattered throughout our universe, each of which contains hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of smaller galaxies. This was another key issue that bothered many of our early astronomy ancestors. They were repeatedly forced to address the question of why these gigantic clusters had not broken up into smaller galaxies – like so many others had – during the 14 billion year projected lifespan of our universe after the initial theorized Big-Bang.

  The most reasonable conclusion that early scientists reached was that these “super-clusters” were held together by common gravity, just like the rest of our universe. Since they formed billions of years ago then it follows that more than
90 percent of the matter in a given “super-cluster” must be composed of dark matter. Otherwise, the gravity generated by the detectable objects in the clusters would not have been sufficient to hold them together for this length of time and they would surely have separated by now.

  The most controversial of theories regarding “dark matter” is based on the inflationary Big-Bang model – the hypothesis that our universe is basically an expanding, spherical explosion that was initiated long ago. It is a commonly accepted explanation as to why galaxies fly apart as the matter contained within them cools unless they are close enough for their gravity to influence each other. This model asserts that the universe went through a period of rapid expansion while it was still very young, bringing the “cosmological constant” for this expansion close to one.

  I won’t bore you with additional details that make no sense to people who do not study these theories as part of their career. But I will say that in order for the aforementioned constant to be near one, the total mass of the universe would have to be more than 100 times the amount of visible mass that appears to be present when using our telescopes and measuring equipment. All in all, I would go so far as to theorize that as much as 99 percent or more of the mass of our universe could arise from the presence of “dark matter”. Keep in mind that this is only one theory out of dozens that we’ve used to try and more closely identify and measure these invisible galactic objects.

  Most people are familiar with the standard objects that we can see: (a) Yellow stars like our own sun, (b) Red giants that are cooler, (c) Blue giants that are in the last stages of their lifespan, (d) Gaseous and radioactive dust clouds (or nebulae) that are lit up by the radiation from dying suns, (e) tiny white dwarfs that are basically burning “coals” left over from the stellar campfire of their earlier life as stars, (f) Planets, moons and asteroids, etc. There are also two general manners in which a star will die when it finds itself at the end of its long lifespan.