Earth to Centauri: The First Journey (Captain Anara - Antariksh Book 1)

by Kumar L

  ‘These are the scientific observation and experimental labs, for your use Dr. Lian. We have planned to make every conceivable equipment available for your use to carry out any test you may require. Also, there are temperature and pressure controlled chambers for storage of samples including bio-matter if you are lucky enough to find it,’ continued Dr. Pratyush.

  ‘The medical centre is designed to accommodate up to five patients at a time with two intensive care bays and medical robots who can function autonomously. All standard imaging solutions are already planned for and once your own doctor joins up we can finalize anything else required by him.’

  Madhavan took over at this point, ‘The comm system is designed on standard interfaces. Person to person contact is through your embedded earpieces. Ship to Earth is where we a challenge. So, the plan is threefold. One, standard transmissions will be on general wavelengths but the time to receive will be long. Two, we still do not have the FTL transmission details from Military Research. That needs to be incorporated. Finally, we will be setting up repeater drone stations on the periphery of the solar system to ensure data is captured, stored and forwarded. This is basically a redundancy to ensure we catch all transmission.’

  ‘But this also essentially means that we are cut-off from base once we reach the heliopause boundary, right?’ Anara asked more as a confirmation. Having lead multiple missions across the system she was used to working without regular instructions. However, the complexities of interstellar travel were different and she may need to call home in a hurry. She needed to get the FTL transmission installed and would need to push Director Srinivas for that.

  ‘That’s right. There has been some work done on FTL communications but I think it's still in the theoretical domain,’ replied Dr. Pratyush. A ship with its power systems could do FTL speed but it was another matter trying to push electromagnetic waves faster than light.

  Ryan and Madhavan moved off to check the sub-systems assembly areas while Dr. Lian moved back to office to confirm specifications of her science stations and work with some people from VSSC who would be joining her. A capable academic she had agreed to this mission only for the chance to gather data first-hand. She hated being the person in charge and was happy only in her lab alone with her work. She regarded everyone else as an intrusion but had learnt to accept them grudgingly. This mission would hopefully be routine and she would be able to gather enough information to advance her work in planetary sciences and get some answers to the age of Earth and the hopefully the Universe itself.

  Anara was apprehensive looking at the ship. She had known about her command for some time now and most of the specs were committed to her memory. There was so much work to be done before this ship could get airborne. Her immediate task would be to ensure her crew was trained to perfection on every aspect of piloting this ship. They were just getting started on the greatest journey the world had ever known.

  21st May 2117

  Repercussions

  Antariksh was now a billion kilometers away from the point of the encounter, holding position.

  Anara was in her cabin furious with herself, not for having retreated but having been caught off-guard. She knew she had taken the correct decisions both in approaching the unknown ship and in retreating when threatened. Clearly the opposition, as she thought of them now, was more powerful or more determined to repel them with weapons which were clearly more advanced.

  What she could not fathom was why an alien civilization would send a message to Earth and then attack the ship which answered their call? If they wanted to remain aloof why send a signal back at all? Once the aliens knew Anara’s ship did not have the firepower why didn’t they just go ahead and destroy the ship instead of allowing it to escape? There were too many unanswered questions.

  She pondered over the options in front of her. She had minimal weapons and no way to upgrade what she had. Her ship could travel at FTL only for limited time and her crew would be confined at that time. They had no idea about the capabilities of the aliens. The region of space was unfamiliar to her. There were no star systems nearby or places for them to hide if the ship came back. There was no place to run and nothing to fight back with. She was between a rock and a hard place.

  She walked to the large port in her cabin and converted it to a view screen. The peaceful blackness outside belied the peril her crew and she were facing. Far beyond what her eyes could perceive was the little blue planet she called home. It would be so easy to just give up and return home, she thought. She was confident that no one would question her decision to return home in the face of overwhelming odds. But would she be able to face herself knowing that she turned tail at the first sign of trouble and never actually faced off the threat? And what about the fact that a new mission would not take place for another few years till the ship could be made ready to face the threat.

  She also worried of the effect this incident would have back on Earth. Fear and confusion would only be the beginning. Xenophobes would probably force governments to roll back the space programmes, content to live in their cocoons. Decades of progress made by mankind in understanding the secrets of the Universe would be lost. And all because she went back.

  In command of the ship, she knew her responsibilities towards the crew but they had also understood and accepted the risks the mission necessitated. Would that still allow her to risk the lives of the crew in an encounter they could not possibly win? She knew the crew would follow her no matter what happened but the consequences would be on her head alone. She never had a person die under her command, would she be able to live knowing she had multiple deaths on her conscience?

  She pulled back from the port and sat down, pulling up a display and calling for their position data. As the details came up, her thoughts ran through her options again. Suddenly a new thought hit her. What if the ship they had encountered was not from Proxima or from the people they were supposed to contact at all? Since the ship was encountered on the way to Proxima Centauri they had all assumed that it was from that planet. But what if it was not? What if this was from another planet altogether. That might explain why they did not respond to her overtures.

  She thought back to her sessions with Dr. Aryan and her team at GMRT. This question of the probability of Proxima Centauri as the source had been discussed endlessly. Every simulation had indicated the origin of the signal as Proxima B but that did not necessarily mean that Proxima B was inhabited. It could simply be a repeating station like the Earth station on Pluto. This possibility had been discussed as well. But in the absence of further inputs they had to go with the information on hand.

  Her assignment was to find the source of the signal and make contact with whoever sent it. It was presupposed that the people who sent the signal could be found at the source. The prevalent theory was that there could not be more than a handful of civilizations in our galaxy capable of spaceflight and the mission designed around it. The best minds on Earth had endorsed this thought. If this was true then it was likely that the adversary would also know this - therefore to attack another species did not make logical sense. What was the motive in attacking an approaching ship without even identifying it?

  And how had they managed to locate her ship in the vastness of space unless .. unless they knew someone would travel that route sooner or later? This brought back to the fact that the alien ship was somehow linked to Centauri or maybe they had just managed to intercept the exchange of signals.

  She also had to keep in the mind the issues on board the ship. They had still not found the source of the power drain despite non-stop efforts of the crew. The drain was still not substantial but if it was linked to a critical system and caused a failure during another confrontation, her ship would be even more vulnerable.

  Then there was the issue with Dr. Khan’s findings on radiation exposure. Again, it was not critical but the absence of an answer concerned her. She had approved extension of the tests on every person of the crew but there were no answers s
o far.

  Finally, there was Narada. It was true that the AI had not shown any cause for concern over the last few days since they became aware of problem and its conduct during the incident had been by the book, she still had her misgivings.

  After the encounter, she had already put her team back to work on each of these issues. Dr. Khan was working with Dr. Lian to find the reasons for exposure and possible treatment methods. Since the exposure was very low they were hesitant to try and anti-radiation therapies right now.

  Ryan and Madhavan were deep into the engine room. With the ship stopped in space, they had wanted to open out the engines entrails and ‘fix the damn thing’ as Madhavan put it. She had however overruled it. Knowing the nature of threat, it would not be prudent to be sitting ducks without a working power source.

  The Major had on the other hand been a little bit of an enigma the last 24 hours. Instead of feeling defeated like the rest of the crew, he seemed to be increasing in confidence. He had been tasked of finding a way to fight this unknown enemy. It seemed that he had taken to this task with single minded focus so much so that he had turned away from the rest of the crew and was working alone at his station, refusing any offers for help.

  Anara had a long discussion with him on the weapon options. They had even debated whether it was possible to use the escape pods or data pods as ramming vehicles. However, the two of them concluded that while the pods were incredibly strong with sufficient mass but their speed and manoeuvrability were limited making them easy to evade.

  Rawat did tell her that he had a couple of ideas on how to make the ships weapons more formidable but he needed time. She was not sure what his plan was but she had given him space to work out it out. She had expected Rawat to work with Ryan but he had specifically asked Anara not to do so. For the moment she would live with this but in another few hours she would have to force his hand.

  That left her with a last thing to do - compose and send a message back to Earth. She had struggled with the content for few hours. She did not want to come across as too defensive about her call during the battle or as a coward. At the same time, she could not blame the designers for the flaws in the ship or the planners for the gaps requiring her to face this situation. She had come into this with her eyes open. They had prepared for a limited hostile engagement. The four laser cannons testified to that, some of the most advanced given the limitation on power aboard a ship. She decided to focus only explaining the facts and her actions and let anyone pass judgement they wanted to.

  Her decision reached, she finished composing her report and sent it off. She now needed to get back to Ops, it was time the team saw her in their midst ready to face the challenge.

  1st June 2114

  Secrets

  Dr. Pratyush was troubled to put it mildly. The call from the defence ministry 3 months back had been unexpected. They had been very emphatic in their demand. The endorsement from the PM’s office had come in shortly after this. He still did not know what the Defence Research & Development Organization team was going to do to his ship but there was no way he could prevent it. His first thought had been of reaching out to Director Srinivas, but the voice on his communicator had been clear - any leaks and he would be off the program and VSCC before he could say Antariksh.

  He had managed to engineer a report of probable failure of the hull during flight at FTL. That had given him space to pause the work on the ship while the DRDO team made changes to the original design. The purpose of the changes was not known to him but he was sure it had to do with adding additional subsystems to the ship. He had been made to do numerous calculations on weight, power and range of the ship and he was sure additions were to be made.

  Two days back the whole programme had been put on hold for three weeks ostensibly to allow the design to be retested. The construction crew had been sent off to work on off-site subsystems while the design team ran multiple simulations and tests on the hull design to find the failure. The assembly area had been shut down and cordoned off by a security team again explained away by stating the need to keep sensitive technology safe from prying eyes.

  Then the DRDO team had landed up in the dead of the night with their trailers full of equipment. He had not been allowed to enter the assembly area and was supposedly on personal leave. His presence in the design room was only to continuously recheck the new changes made to the ship to ensure that did not fail in flight. He had a group of DRDO specialists to help him. He had never met a bunch of more dour faced individuals. His natural liveliness had wilted in from of their single minded focus on getting their work done on time and complete secrecy. They gave him the proper respect but he knew he was only nominally in charge at this point. All decisions were being vetted by the DRDO fellow in charge of the refit.

  They had found the perfect time to do this activity. The power plant was getting delayed and the ship hull would not have delayed the overall project anyway.

  The team first cut out original components and then created additional space in the hull. The changes were supposedly hidden as additional hull break prevention bulkheads on the ship. Dr. Pratyush would sign off on it as part of the overall design changes. It would certainly raise a few eyebrows but he was confident he would be able to manage it with his teams.

  The new components were lifted into the newly created spaces. The power connections were done and then the teams got work in closing the space. Dr. Pratyush had to admire the quality of their work and how each member knew exactly what to do. He did not know it but the team had been practicing on mock-ups for many weeks. Every job had been planned to a high degree of precision to complete everything in the short time available.

  They next moved to the power plant area. Pratyush had no clue what they were doing but apparently the new components required quite a bit of power to operate. He wondered how they would hide the power consumption from the ship’s crew. Apparently they had a plan for that as well when the systems team called up the programming details for the power systems as well as the AI. They inserted a number of codes so complex even his top engineer would take weeks to unravel what was happening.

  What bothered him most was the reprogramming of the AI. AI’s were governed under strict international protocols ever since they had been deemed as living entities though not exactly human. Rights and duties had been defined and failsafe mandated to protect human lives due the actions of AI’s. Their programmes could not be easily modified and the general operating parameters and character traits had to be submitted for ratification. In case of classified projects this would be the Ethics Committee for Artificial Intelligence Development of the Government of India. It seems the DRDO team did not need such a permission. They already had the cipher key to unlock the programme and by extension should be having the executive override authority to make changes.

  Then another two large trucks rolled into the assembly area. He was asked to move out of the campus at this point. He had no clue what were the contents of the truck and what exactly had taken place over the course of two days and night to his ship.

  The only hiccup in the entire exercise happened at this point. One of the riggers faced a malfunction and dropped a heavy load on the welding engineer’s hand. He had to be moved to hospital and his junior took up the job to finish it. A few bits and pieces were left to be welded to close the opening and the substitute hoped he had done the job well. He did not notice the cracks which developed post the welding. Since the plan was behind schedule the required post checks were skipped and If anyone had been measuring the leakage they would have raised an alarm but this was not part of the plan and the leak went noticed.

  In the meantime, Pratyush was handed over a new set of numbers to begin his work on checking integrity and consumptions again. It required modifications to the ship design but the changes were very minor and he was sure he could find a way to manage it. He just hoped that the changes would not affect the safety of the crew. He had been expressly forbidden to try and find what c
hanges had been done and one officer from the DRDO would be embedded in his team to ensure his compliance.

  All this work had taken a surprisingly short time. In three weeks, the ship was put back in shape. The team from DRDO moved out of the complex and a specialized cleaning crew then moved in to remove all traces of the intrusion including those in the computer systems. People would wonder about certain components in the design but those would easily be lost in the massive project being undertaken.

  The Defence Minister got the call at his home later the same night.

  ‘It’s done Sir,’ said the voice at the other end.

  ‘Thank you,’ he acknowledged. It was not done yet. His work was just getting started. He was going to ensure his country and this mission got what they deserved.

  He had started working on this idea the day the PM had given the go ahead for the mission. He knew the so called peaceniks would never agree to the mission being managed by any of the defence services. But he was firm in his belief. The challenge on how to get it done without arousing suspicion. That he would need to use all the branches of the military directly under his control was beyond a doubt and he would need to create a team of elite engineers and scientists with him.

  It had taken almost five years to get everything in place. The execution was completed today. Now he needed to proceed to the next step and get his man prepared. He tapped his earpiece and placed a call.

  21st May 2117

  Revelations

  Ryan and Madhavan had been working for 24 hours straight without a break. They were still no closer to an answer than a few weeks ago. They’d realized that repeating the same methods was not going to cut it but had stuck to it doggedly. They were both in the power plant reprogramming the drones to go deeper into the recesses of the plant.

  ‘It’s not going to work, Commander,’ said Madhavan. ‘We’ve tried every place we can open and still no clue. The only thing left is to stop the damn ship and strip the plant open.’