The Tides of Altamar

By Brian Gonzalez

The Cataclysm which destroyed Earth catches up with the fleeing survivors aboard Interstellar Ship One, and a young Colonial Corps Governor struggles against a harsh planetary environment and political opposition to establish a new colony. Additionally, the first generation of humans born away from Earth starts looking for trouble, and a desperate woman fights against Ice-Ship law for her right to be a mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780991108619

Book preview

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Preface

This is the second book in the On Distant Worlds series. If you have not read the first book, you will still be able to read this one as a stand-alone novel. However some sections, most notably the Interludes, feature characters and storylines continued from the first book. To fully place these in context, I recommend picking up the first novel when you have the chance. There are no major spoilers for Book 1 in this book.

The inspiration for one sub-theme of this novel was ancient graffiti. Many centuries ago a pilgrim traveled to a temple in the Middle East and etched his name and the date in a wall to record his visit. I gave his name to the major character in Part 1, and his motivation to other characters in other sections.

The cover is pure and utter fiction. The F-drive torch should not be lit. The Ice-Ship would never go close enough to a star that you could visually make out its surface. Surface structures would not be visible at this scale. There are a couple of things wrong with the planet as well, according to the story. The odd proportions of a cover are challenging, as is the need to create a composition which has bleed room on the edges and space for titling. Let’s just say I’ve learned a lot about designing book covers. But I’m not unhappy with it; I was attempting to channel the science fiction artists of the 60’s and 70’s (if they had had Photoshop) and I think I got within striking distance of that goal.

To learn a little more about the ODW universe, visit ondistantworlds.com. The site is more or less always under construction so please excuse the dust. Don’t miss the timeline.

Thank you all for your support,

Brian Gonzalez

California, 2013

Prologue

Dark Waters

Colonial Corps Logo c. 2200 C.E.

Karl Edgar Nassim

Last Human Standing, Essay 21

88 A.C.

Am I the most fundamentally alone that any human has ever been?

Even the poorest wretch on the fringes of society might hope each day to make eye contact with another human being, if only to exchange dismissive looks or an upraised middle finger. I certainly do not have that option, marooned here alone on Europa. The sense of solitude hovers above me with such gravity that it seems there is nothing but solid stone filling the universe around these thin metal walls; as though this research outpost were a deeply buried tomb. As in fact it will become a tomb one day; my very own, and buried not in bedrock but in deep layers of time.

And yet, am I more fundamentally alone than the brave explorer dying alone on some remote peak? Am I more alone than the dying victim of the earthquake, buried under tons of rubble?

It occurs to me that the explorer and the quake victim might hope for rescue in a manner that I cannot. A helicopter, a rescue team… it would not be impossible. Of the many brave explorers lost alone over the centuries, it is inevitable that some were rescued. Survivors are pulled from beneath the rubble after every earthquake, after all.

But it seems unreasonable for me to have such hopes. If I was marooned here and there was a fully functional space fleet operating from Earth, it would still be logistically difficult to retrieve me. And there is no fleet on Earth; there is nothing on Earth. There is nothing but a shroud of black smoke choking a silent planet. The smoke is shot through with lightning as if advertising in neon the success of the extinction.

But on the other hand, I often heard it said that nobody is more truly alone than the one who is alone while surrounded by people. Would I not feel infinitely worse knowing there was still a community somewhere; one which I could never join?

And yet, in that scenario, I would not have to mourn the entire human race.

I suppose it is possible there were moments in which every single one of us was as alone as anyone has ever felt. I suppose that is, or rather was, a fundamental consequence of the human condition. And certainly I had moments in life when I felt so, despite there still being other members of my species around. In those times I reached for the presence of God. In those times I did not feel fundamentally abandoned.

But I have to confess I am having a harder time finding reassurance from the Almighty in the current situation. I struggle to understand why God would allow the Cataclysm to happen; or far worse, why He might have sent it. If it was in punishment for our sins, what of the many other lives of His Creation; simple creatures who do not sin? What of the presumptive life on other worlds; should it also meet extinction for our original sins? Or did we in fact die for sins of theirs?

In the years before the Cataclysm many new religions were born on Earth. One of the largest, The Church of the Eternal Night, espoused the belief that the Cataclysm was the will of God, and that it was a sin to attempt to survive the disaster. In my darkest moments I fear they were right, and that I am the one who has been singled out for eternal punishment.

Then I recognize that according to my own religion, I am committing the minor sin of egotism.

The Church I belonged to had a far different approach. We believed that the Cataclysm was a sort of final exam. God left clues for our survival in the form of mathematics and science, along with a methodology template and an indication of His will, in the story of the Great Flood. Blueprints and instructions, if you will, for a modern Ark. The Warrens and the BioShip were supposed to be that Ark.

But it seems we failed the exam. And although I am not quite sure why, I appear to have gotten Detention. And I have no idea what I am supposed to do here, except possibly write these humble paragraphs.

I find it harder each day to take solace from the Almighty.

But I haven’t given up faith.

Interstellar Ship One Advisory Council

Meeting Minutes

c. 2199 C.E.

Roll Call:

Overcaptain: Sara Margaret Kilcannon (Present)

Lobe 1 Captain: Louis Abayo Samine (Present)

Lobe 2 Undercaptain: Nasser Gabriel Fayyad (Present)

Lobe A Governor: Edward Mays LeSalle (Present)

Colonial Corps Commander: Rochelle Annalisa Ermes (Present)

Samine: This meeting is in session. The purpose of this meeting is a non-binding advisory vote regarding the go/no-go for colonization of the planet designated as Colony Target Five. No other business shall be considered at this meeting. Before we begin, are there any new findings which might assist us in making our determinations? Undercaptain Fayyad?

Fayyad: We have no new data to report concerning CT-5. We still haven’t been able to pin down the planet’s orbit with high confidence; we still haven’t been able to photograph the surface. Otherwise the readings continue to look good; really good, in fact. But we just haven’t had the time to get harder numbers. We haven’t been able to get any proof.

Samine: Thank you, Undercaptain. Commander Ermes?

Ermes: Well, as you can imagine with no new data coming in we’ve cracked the initial numbers as hard as we could. Half the Corps has been working on this. We can’t add confidence to the model that it’s very likely there’s land masses under there. But we are feeling good about the possibility. We can’t disprove that the planetary orbit might be unstable. As Undercaptain Fayyad said a moment ago, there simply hasn’t been time. That part we do not necessarily feel quite so positive about. So, still a conundrum on our end.

Samine: Very well. Are there any other items for consideration? None? Final opportunity, then. I call for statement and non-binding vote. Undercaptain Fayyad?

Fayyad: I abstain from casting my vote. I do not have enough information to make an educated choice. I agree the planet looks fine, chemically and biologically speaking. Much better than CT-1, which we actually colonized. But the bottom line for me is we know it’s a water-world and we can’t see the surface. So-called mathematical proof of a surface isn’t enough for me. Add in the high gravity and unknown orbital stability and the turbulent atmosphere… again, there is only theory to sustain this colonization mission. And yet it is good theory. So I choose to abstain.

Samine: So noted and so recorded. Governor LeSalle?

LeSalle: Public sentiment is for the effort, so initially I was going to vote in the affirmative. But as an individual I have to agree with the Undercaptain. Personally I would not fly on this mission. Not that anyone is asking me to! But it places me in a tough situation. I cannot in good conscience vote the way the public would like me to. Therefore I also must abstain.

Samine: So noted and recorded. Commander Ermes? And please do not just say Anytime, anywhere! and vote in the affirmative.

Ermes: But I am saying that. We only ever say it because we mean it. A breathable atmosphere, water, and gravity that won’t quite kill us? We relish the chance. We completely trust our physicists when they calculate that there’s land surface under those clouds, just as you officers and official ought to place trust in Colonial Corps that we can successfully colonize the place! Of course we can do this. I vote most emphatically in the affirmative!

Samine: Commander, that was… predictable, yet eloquent. Perhaps the Governor there could use a new speechwriter when you retire. As for myself, I vote in the negative. As the Captain of Lobe 1, I am directly responsible for the Authority personnel who would pilot the landing boat, and I have seen nothing to convince me those brave pilots would not be laying their lives on the line for nothing. Are there any addenda? Very well. Overcaptain Kilcannon, on the matter of the possible colonization of the planet designated CT-5, I present an advisory vote total of one vote in the affirmative, and one vote in the negative, with two abstentions.

Kilcannon: The lot of you is far less helpful to me than one might think.

Samine: Admitted with apologies, Overcaptain.

Kilcannon: Our mandate is to colonize worlds, and the trust in Interstellar Ship One to fulfill that task was given us by the entire human race. They put that faith in us with no proof whatsoever that any worlds would survive the Cataclysm. Now the physicists and planetologists and the Colonial Corps are asking for the same level of trust, while showing us photographic and analytic evidence of just such a world. I cannot help but think the people who launched the BioShip would have jumped at this opportunity. Thoughts?

LeSalle: It’s rather hard to find fault with your assessment, Overcaptain, given that you were there.

Kilcannon: It’s not polite to discuss a lady’s age, Governor. Ever more so as the centuries pass.

LeSalle: Oh, I know. But none of the people who work for you were going to say it.

Kilcannon: Well, that much is true. Thank you for your time, everyone. I understand this is risky. I understand that you have objections and I understand the nature of those objections. But I have heard nothing to change my mind. The CT-5 colonization mission is Go. Captain Samine, if you would be so kind?

Samine: Certainly, Overcaptain. There will be no call for final orders of business, and this meeting is adjourned.

[Indistinct: 26 seconds]

LeSalle: Nasser, what the hell? This is borderline crazy. Why is she pushing so hard on this? She’s liable to kill all these people.

Fayyad: Shh. The recorders are still on.

LeSalle: Who cares? Like anyone will ever access these records. I got to tell you, I think this is dicey.

[Record ends]

Tasaya Belocq

The Voyage of the Emissary

1000 A.C.

I have travelled back in time.

It is the 970s again. I am in my hometown. It is a winter day and the sky is gunmetal gray, with large and indecisive flakes of snow vacillating down from above.

I am seven years old, except when I am older or younger in that fluid surrealism of the dream-state. I look up at the sky and watch the flakes tumble to earth but I do not see them as they are. I see stars, drifting past me as though I am moving through outer space at speed. I pick up a snow-covered rock and hold it up in dark silhouette to the winter sky. "Je suis le BioNavire, I say. Vroom, vroom."

"Que faites-tu?" The voice behind me makes me jump. It is some of the kids from the schoolyard; they shouldn’t be here at all; they are from earlier in my life, but then I realize I am in the schoolyard after all. I turn and the tough kids are there. The three of them are always together, their snow hats pulled down low on their foreheads, doing what they can to make life miserable for the other children. Which other than stupid comments is precious little since we live in a civilized society; but in the dream it does not appear to be true that this is so. I definitely feel a sense of danger.

"Rien, I say defensively, but of course they are not fooled. One of them spots the rock and snatches it away from me. ’Vroom, vroom,’" he quotes me as the other two scream with laughter. Then he throws the rock away; it arcs into the snow and darkness and disappears from sight. It lands unseen in the gloom, without making a sound.

"Le BioNavire est mort, he gets right in my face to tell me, Comme votre cerveau!" And they cackle gleefully.

I hear them and the words hurt but my focus must be on the rock. I must find it. I break away from them and run into the cold darkness; they follow and jeer at me from behind. "Tassi est fou! Tassi est fou!" I scrabble around in the snow for the rock, my fingers going numb from the cold. But I cannot find it. Twice I think I have it in my hand, only to bring the empty palm of a white glove to my face.

The tough kids have caught up to me. They encircle me and start closing in. They continue to chant that I am crazy; the sing-song fills my head and I struggle to remember that none of this is real. It is a dream and I should not have come here; nothing good can come of visiting the past like this. I know that I am in my cabin on Emissary, light-years away from Earth. I know I am asleep. I know that I am decades away from the fear and the uncertainty and the loneliness.

Or am I?

Part One

Ripples

Commander Mitchell Evers

c. 2201 C.E.

As soon as Commander Mitchell Evers awoke he knew something was drastically wrong.

A moment ago – or had it been hours? – he dreamt of his former life as a passenger on Interstellar Ship One; fragments of memories of a time before he joined ISA and detached to Colonial Corps. There had been warmth and faces and laughter. Then something, he wasn’t sure what, had brought him out of his induced sleep to a visual field of plain black. There was no image of the cloud-shrouded planet they were supposed to be approaching; the colonial target CT-5. There were no constantly changing readout numbers flickering down the right-hand side of the display. Even the current time was gone from its familiar position at top left. Everything was gone and his display appeared to be dead.

Evers did not think this was a particularly cheerful development, especially because he was the individual responsible for the Landing Boat and all the colonists aboard it. He felt a mild and delayed surge of adrenalin as he tried to speak; his fight-or-flight response was attenuated by the medications and nanotech in his bloodstream. His first attempt at speech resulted in only a harsh croak. Evers dry-swallowed, calmed himself, and tried again. Ship’s report, he said. Nothing happened. The viewscreen inside his deceleration helmet remained dark, silent, and uncooperative.

Fighting back sudden fear, Evers concentrated on remembering protocol for this situation. If confronted with unresponsive equipment during deceleration, he recalled, attempt to contact the ship computer. He had already done that without response. He moved to the second item on the list: Attempt to contact the flight crew.

Estero? Maunder? You men receiving me? The deceleration plunge from the Ice-Ship to CT-5 was a long haul: well over three months of high-G flight time. The length and difficulty of the mission meant a full triple-redundancy complement of pilots, but neither of the other rocket jockeys was now responding. Either the radio was down or both were still asleep. Without his readouts, Evers had no way of verifying which of the other two pilots should have been miserably half-awake and on watch.

Attempt to contact the medical team. Doctor Durban? Can you read me?

There was no response.

Evers bit on his lower lip as he considered the situation. If they were still to scheduled flight plan, they had a week or more of high-G travel remaining in their voyage. That made it impossible for him to shut down his prosthetic gear and climb out of the deceleration bag to see what was going on. He concentrated on trying to feel the vibration of the skiff through the deceleration gel that surrounded his body. Naturally, the nanotech-packed biogel all around him dampened the ship’s vibrations; that was, after all, part of its function. But one could still glean a little information from the environment. As he slowly pushed his arms through the stuff, Evers could tell that he was suspended near the back of his bag and that the gel there was more viscous than the gel in front of him. The skiff was still decelerating, then. Good. Whatever had happened, it had not been utterly catastrophic. The skiff was apparently still on track to go into a burn-assisted solar orbit around CT-5’s parent star in a matter of days.

Time passed. At first Evers tried tracking its passage by imagining familiar music, but this proved too much for his concentration, which was still somewhat tenuous from who-knew-how-long in induced sleep. From time to time he tried the comm system again, but it continued to provide no response. Neither did it provide static, though; nor a carrier wave hiss. Therefore it was more likely that the radio was simply not operating, rather than working perfectly and receiving no signals. In fact, from the perfectly ordinary behavior of the skiff as he estimated it from the gel around him, it was likely his fellow pilots were attempting to contact him even as he tried to call them. And whatever had happened, the skiff itself would in theory be self-repairing or otherwise compensating for whatever might have gone wrong. So Evers’s best strategy was to simply wait. This was fortunate, because waiting was the only option which had presented itself.

Evers had no idea how long he waited. It was long enough that he drifted off once or twice into genuine rather than medically induced sleep. He did not doze for long on those occasions, however. For one thing, his body was quite understandably tired of sleeping. For another, nasty dreams woke him in panic and confusion. These he could not quite remember afterwards except for one: that he was the last survivor of the mission. His was the lone surviving deceleration bag, and all around him was death and devastation. Bags rent open to reveal shattered and vacuum-boiled bodies; the lander open to hard vacuum.

That was ridiculous, of course. Anything which could have destroyed the lander would also have destroyed the comparatively fragile deceleration bags within it. But still the fear was there. And of course Evers could not speak for any of the other landers.

When the radio finally squawked it scared Evers half to death. …you there? Estero to Commander Evers, do you read?

I read you, Raul. Good to hear your voice. As Evers answered his helmet display blinked back into life, showing initially as just a dull curved white rectangle which made him wince and squint after his period of utter darkness. The nanotech sensed his discomfort and dimmed the display. A moment later the white rectangle blinked out and much to Evers’s relief was replaced by the standard mission screen. He had never before realized how beautiful the simple and utilitarian display actually was. There was CT-5 in the center, girdled as usual by bands of white and gray clouds. Its two small asteroidal moons and their larger companion were not currently in the picture. Around the imaged planet the readouts resumed their flickering telemetry, reporting distances to various targets as well as the landing boat’s velocity and course and other vital information.

But there were two alert boxes as well. As Evers scanned them Estero spoke again, essentially telling Evers the same thing he was reading: We got hit. Space dust or something. The landers are all okay but there’s damage to the Landing Boat assembly and to the skiff. We’re venting ice and worse yet, we lost the skiff’s primary sensor array.

Shit. The six landers were coupled to the orbital skiff, which hopped its ride in-system from Interstellar Ship One inside the Landing Boat. The latter was essentially an ocean liner-sized box with two compact automated fusion plants inside and four huge external deceleration thrusters. Current mission information was provided by sensors on the exterior of the Landing Boat, but once the skiff detached and went into orbit Evers had to rely on the skiff’s own sensors, which were apparently now fried.

Other voices came on-line; including Keff Durban wanting to know if everyone felt all right. After satisfying himself that the pilots and other two doctors – one semi-awake human per lander – were alive and functional, the medical chief delivered the medical update: All personnel accounted for and uninjured. No casualties. But I don’t know what we’ll do if there’s a problem in one of the non-doctor landers. Because from what I’m seeing, my team can’t move from lander to lander.

That’s affirmative, Doctor. For now we have zero atmosphere in the skiff, Evers answered. Presumably that will self-repair, or we might have to finish patching it ourselves. One way or another, we’ll handle it, even if that means suiting up to move between landers. Evers ignored the doctor’s resultant dramatic groan. From training he remembered how much the medical personnel had hated trying to do their jobs in environment suits.

Okay, I patched into the engineering channels and I’ve got the damage on bot-cam, said Third Pilot Al Maunder. Looks bad but I guess it could have been a lot worse. As he spoke the imagery from the repair bots appeared on Evers’s display, cycling through feeds from the half-dozen bots congregating at the damaged sensor array. It looked like a cluster of small objects had punched through the protective forward wall of the Landing Boat, somehow having survived the plasma blast of the F-drive deceleration thrusters. Most had missed the skiff and landers, damaging only the Landing Boat but fortunately not either of its F-plants. However one or more of the micrometeoroids had just barely contacted the forward part of the skiff’s primary sensor array, where the ground-penetrating radar transmitter emerged from the package of delicate instruments. The GPR transmitter had been destroyed; partly shattered and partly vaporized. It was obvious that the spreading cloud of superheated fragments had punched through the rest of the instruments package, riddling the sensitive instruments with microscopic melt-tunnels and specks of debris. The blast had then punched through the keel and top hull of the orbital skiff, as well as holing the human access tunnel which ran the length of the skiff, before blasting through the Landing Boat and out into space.

"Madre de Dios, said Estero. Five degrees to the aft and that impactor blows the forward F-plant."

Yeah, said Evers. And just five centimeters the opposite way makes all of the damage cosmetic. Guess we averaged out.

Lucky us, said Maunder.

The deceleration continued for several days without further incident. The bots and LB-5 self-healing systems did what they could without human assistance to repair the damage caused by the strike, establishing temporary patches in the access tunnel and beginning repairs to the skiff’s infrastructure. The instrument package was a near total loss, and this close to their destination there was no point in attempting to repair the damage to the disposable landing boat’s simple hull. If the damage had occurred earlier in the deceleration Evers might have felt differently about it, but then again if the same accident had occurred much sooner, while the skiff was moving at a much higher speed, the results would probably have been utterly catastrophic.

Not that everything else was nominal and brimming over with comfort-inducing ease. Evers found himself increasingly worried about their ability to scan CT-5 after they detached from the landing boat. Only a few of the destroyed instruments – the distance radar, the high resolution telescope, the spectrometer – had backups and none of those as powerful or as precise as the lost devices they would have to replace. CT-5’s surface was usually blocked by opaque cloud layers; that could result in problems accurately reading the planet’s surface. Evers consulted with the other pilots to model keeping the landing boat in orbit to relay long-distance telemetry to the skiff after they detached from it, but that proved unworkable. The massive and ungainly transport used only its four powerful F-drives for attitude adjustment, and these did not possess the fine control necessary to maintain an accurate enough orbit to both scan the distant planet and accurately pinpoint the long-range communication lasers. As far as the spent landing boat was concerned, Evers would be plunging it into the sun as per protocol.

Less than a week later, the landing boat’s big thrusters shut down but for occasional short-burn course adjustments which eventually placed them into a safe solar orbit. The long haul from the Ice-Ship into the CT-5 system was complete. They had made it.

There was no feeling quite like cycling out of a deceleration bag. As the gel slowly drained away Evers was left gently drifting in the center of the collapsing bag, shivering violently. His teeth chattered. The majority of the nanitic devices in the gel and in his bloodstream began to shut down. It felt a little like removing a bandage from a fresh wound on his soul. He felt… smaller, somehow. Some liked to call this process Second Birth: after months in their bags with umbilicals keeping them alive, the colonists emerged weak, naked, and covered with fluid to discover a strange new world.

Evers was not that much of a romantic. He just called it a pain in the ass.

When the gel finished draining there was a brief period of adjustment as the computer examined his condition and pumped some stimulants and proteins through his helmet shunt. Then the helmet shut down but for the all-clear green dot and Evers reached up with arms weakened by atrophy despite constant electrochemical stimulation to remove the form-fitting soft headpiece. He left it there to deal with later, along with the bag. This was not strictly speaking to protocol, but the same grid which had supported his deceleration bag now prevented its constituent parts from drifting into its neighbors. Evers wanted to get wet eyes on the situation. He would clean up the deceleration bag later.

He popped the bag open lengthwise and thrashed out into the relative open. The top and smallest deck of Lander 6 was dark and still and cold. Three other deceleration bags, still closed, rested quietly in the cradles of hydraulic struts which supported them. Nonessential personnel would not be awoken until the skiff was safely in orbit around CT-5. Evers floated there for a moment to gather his strength and his wits.

Lights, Evers said when he was able. Recessed panels in the wall activated and the deck came to visibility in gentle and low light, selected to be easy on the eyes after months in mostly darkness. With a groan, Evers reached over the lip of the opened cocoon and down to his sealed storage space under the cradle. He found his comm pad and attached it to the back of his left hand, then activated it to check on the other pilots and the medical team. Satisfied that everyone was floating out of their wombs and putting themselves together, Evers concentrated on doing the same. He felt like his body was being hit by thousands of high-pressure, needle-thin streams of water. The motions required to pull a simple tunic over his head intensified this sensation to truly amazing levels. And about halfway through the process he was hit with a wave of weakness and hunger which might have literally floored him in a gravity field, but after a moment it passed, leaving him nauseated but able to finish the laborious process of pulling on a single item of clothing.

Evers asked the computer for readouts of the environmental conditions in the skiff and was informed that atmospheric pressure and temperature were on the low side of normal. Survivable, then. Thanking the designers of the landing boat for the repair bots which had prevented him having to suit up right now, Evers cracked the hatch and pulled himself out of the lander and into the access tunnel that ran the length of the orbital skiff.

The tunnel was in the shape of an asymmetrical hexagon, four meters across at its widest point. It ran forward to the modest crew compartment and small pilot’s cabin, and aft to the positively tiny engineering section. Humans were not expected to actually work on the skiff’s single small F-drive; maintenance was entirely robotic. Evers doubted anyone would ever visit the engineering section on a skiff except to check off maintenance logs, or possibly for a cramped and uncomfortable tryst. Engraved on the tunnel’s polymetal wall were arrows to indicate which way lay forward. Rungs protruded from the walls at regular intervals to provide handholds in low-gravity conditions.

The access tunnel was otherwise featureless but for the hatches which led to each of the six planetary landers. These, including the aft-most one which Evers had just drifted through, were spaced twenty meters apart from each other, three each on what would have been the lower side walls of the six-sided tunnel, had there been any gravity to establish a down and a floor. Otherwise there was little to see but drab blue-gray bulkheads and his breath curling whitely through the frigid air. Evers used the rungs to pull himself forward through the gloomy cold. Just aft of the bulkhead which partitioned the crew compartment from the accessway, he found some of the patches the bots had installed.

Postulating a gravity field, the fast-moving specks of matter had entered the tunnel at the junction of the floor and the port lower sidewall, superheated from their encounters with the landing boat’s forward plate and the skiff’s instrumentation package. The blast had carried more or less straight up the wall and out the top, leaving the wall as well as the edges of floor and ceiling riddled with holes and gaps. The damage was heaviest at the entry point where there was a thirty-centimeter entry wound surrounded by ruined floor and wall which looked like they would crumble at a touch. Up top the damage was more spread out but less ruinous. Many of the smallest holes were plugged with globs of yellowish resin; the result of metallurgic defenses built into the bulkhead itself. Overlying the damaged area from the exterior were the strips of electrostatic metal foil the bots had used to temporarily seal the ruptured skiff.

On the other side of the bulkhead, between the tunnel and the skiff’s hull, lay tons of ice. It was there for several reasons: fuel for the F-plant, as additional radiation shielding, and most importantly of all, for human needs. But in this case the ice had helped to plug the exit wound, making things easier for the bots which had to plug the holes. They would still be out there, little machines strengthening the patches to keep the human cargo alive.

The sound of metal on metal announced the arrival of Keff Durban. The good doctor closed the hatch to Lander Five and drifted uncertainly for a moment, looking frail and fragile there in the dimness. Evers knew that he looked much the same way himself. Up here, he called.

Durban took a moment to place himself, then grabbed a rung and pulled himself forward. The man’s skin was utterly pale and there was a heavy five’ o’clock shadow on his face despite the hair growth inhibitors in the deceleration regimen. Evers felt his own chin and sure enough, light stubble. Interesting.

Good Lord, said the Doctor on seeing the damage. How many things hit us?

Probably just a few little flakes that punched through the forward plate. Basically the handful of salt you throw over your shoulder for good luck.

Durban ignored the gallows humor, or perhaps missed it completely. "To cause all that damage?"

Evers heard other hatches beginning to open down the tunnel. The specks that hit us vaporized the sensors which were supposed to find our landing spot. Most of this damage was caused by the remains of our own gear.

Oh, said the doctor. He thought about it for a moment, and then said, I thought specks couldn’t make it past our defenses.

Evers suddenly felt the beginnings of a headache behind his left eyeball. They weren’t specks when we first encountered them, Doctor. For even tiny grains to survive the fusion drives, EM deflectors, and spot vaporizers as well as the active hull, we must have encountered a dense object at least half the size of a lander.

Raul Estero emerged from a hatch, and a moment later the other physician, Viviana Sellik, emerged from another. Let’s get the party started! said Estero, a weak smile on his face. Evers nodded acknowledgment and led them through the forward hatch into the crew area.

Here the tunnel widened to fill most of the skiff’s hull and the larger space was partitioned into smaller compartments not by actual bulkheads, but by plasticized cardboard panels. These were light and cheap, because these spaces would be inhabited for only a few weeks. They were cardboard because from the Ice-Ship’s point of view it was an entirely renewable resource.

There were a mess and a sickbay, neither large enough to hold more than three people simultaneously. There was a tiny toilet of dreadful design. Two chambers were further subdivided into narrow sleeping and privacy slots with nets and curtains. Only the port side walls were not partitioned into cubicles and this area was filled with mission-critical gear; flight command and control panels, an engineering interface, and the observation stations from which they would attempt to locate their new home.

Some damage here, too, Estero said.

Yeah, said Evers, his heart sinking. The skiff’s tiny mess was directly opposite the bulkhead from the impact zone, and some of the superheated fragments had managed to punch through the wall and into the food storage area. He floated over to the mess and opened the holed storage compartment door, making sure he opened it just enough to get an idea of the damage without allowing all the debris to drift out.

How bad is it? asked Durban.

Looks like we lost some Mission Meals, said Evers. The dehydrated full meals had been pre-prepared on Interstellar Ship One and were the only good meals the colonists would have during the journey. That would happen only once a day; the rest of their nutrition would come from dry protein crackers, horrible nasté paste from the biological lunchboxes, and similarly unappealing sources.

The good news grows by the minute, Maunder remarked.

Durban wanted to start running medical on Evers immediately, but the lead pilot was able to put this off with a simple tactic: he lied, telling Durban they were in an emergency situation. They weren’t, of course; the emergency had occurred more than a week ago and the ship had handled it automatically. Everything was perfectly fine at the moment, given their circumstance. But Evers wanted to get on top of the overall situation as soon as possible, and almost as badly and certainly badly enough to lie for, he wanted his thermal jumpsuit and the blanket from his sleeping slot and a damn bulb of hot coffee. He convinced the two physicians and the trauma surgeon, Nicholas Okafore, to run meds on each other first while the flight team stabilized the situation.

Our next window to burn for CT-5 orbit comes in eight days, Estero said around a mouthful of protein biscuit a few minutes later. After that our next achievable window is… he looked up from the wall display and grinned. Fourteen weeks.

Well. We’ve got a lot of work to do quickly, then, said Evers.

Everyone passed medical without trouble other than the expected effects of deceleration sleep: dehydration, weight loss, temporary periods of disorientation, borderline malnutrition, and decreased immunological function. Constipation followed by painful excretion of dead microbots. Their muscles were atrophied and their vision was hypersensitive. Evers constantly felt cold but the doctor told him there was not much to be done about it until he packed on some body fat. Most days he wore two blankets over his jumpsuit and sipped constantly at heated water.

Bot repairs to the skiff’s infrastructure proceeded apace. The central portion of the skiff’s body was composed in the main of simple struts which connected the bow and stern and supported the landers; they were covered only by a single relatively thin hull, and some of the struts had been holed though not critically so. Although the LB-5 computer had calculated that the damage was in all likelihood not enough to impact their burn from solar orbit to CT-5, naturally Evers was not willing to take a chance with the crew’s well-being at stake. Every hour, bots filled the damaged areas with patch and plate.

As the days passed, the colonists began to feel stronger and more capable. Nothing like having honest-to-God calories in your system, Durban told them. Everyone was regaining mass, though not with accompanying weight gain in the zero-gravity conditions, so it did not feel like they were more robust. Estero began to grow back his trademark Victorian mustache.

CT-5 and her three moons regarded them impassively. The planet was a quarter again larger than Earth but not as dense; Colonial Corps had calculated that surface gravity would only be slightly higher than Earth’s was. Day after day they observed her with their secondary instruments, and day after day the planet refused to show them her face. Thin clouds at altitude and more robust weather systems below were the norm. Most of the cloud layer varied between white and light gray, but there were two partial bands of dark gray in the Southern hemisphere and some smaller patches of the like in the North. Pale coronal discharges occasionally flickered at the world’s North Pole, scintillating in ghostly shades of pale green and purplish-blue. The South Pole was not visible from their viewing angle.

It really bothers me that we still have no idea what the surface looks like, Evers told Maunder two days before their scheduled maneuver.

We’ll be able to figure it all out when we’re in orbit, the Third Pilot answered confidently. Evers nodded in at least hypothetical agreement, but privately he was not that confident about the situation.

CT-5’s two smaller moons appeared to be captured asteroids. The third moon was much bigger and resembled Earth’s moon in that it lacked atmosphere and presented a rugged and cratered face. However it was closer to CT-5 than Luna was to Earth, and larger in its proportion; this satellite was almost a third the size of the planet it orbited. Currently the moon looked smaller than that, being millions of kilometers further from Landing Boat 5 than the planet was. Unlike Luna, Moon One had yellowish and brownish splotches on its otherwise gray surface; mineral deposits from long-ago volcanic action.

As the launch window for planetary orbit approached, Evers wondered what would happen if they could not prepare the skiff in time and were forced to remain in the solar orbit for several months. Ordinarily that would not have been a problem, but the loss of Mission Meals was a limiting factor. Fortunately the bots were able to get the repairs done in time to avoid that problem, although just barely. Some of the little machines were still returning to their storage niches in the skiff’s hull when the time arrived to begin maneuvers.

The first and most dangerous of these was decoupling from the landing boat. The orbital skiff would make this last leg of their journey by itself, carrying its biological cargo to a new world without the protection or the massive power of the landing boat. After the skiff was gone, the remains of the landing boat would automatically turn and burn for the sun.

Evers swam into the tiny forward pilot’s compartment. As cold as the crew compartment was, the cockpit was positively frigid. There was barely room for one human in the small cabin. The pilot’s acceleration seat sat in the center of the space, cramped on all sides by equipment, displays, and controls. This was the only part of the months-long flight which required a human in the seat; Colonial Corps regulations demanded direct visual observation of the orbital insertion, not that a human would be likely to save things manually if anything went wrong. It just made the higher-ups at ColCorps feel like they had done everything they could. Estero and Maunder would co-pilot and navigate from the command stations in the crew compartment. Unlike their arrival from the Ice-Ship, this maneuver would not be at very high G-forces. There was no need for deceleration bags or special medical procedures; old-fashioned strapping-in would do quite well.

At Evers’s command, the enormous transport structure fired its thrusters twice, adjusting position so that the back of LB-5 was roughly toward the sun, and its forward plate angled in their direction of travel. Then the plates retracted. The central segments pulled open to reveal the blackness of the void and rolled aside to their limit, at which point their underlying plate segments started retracting. It took nearly ten minutes for the process to run to completion, at which point the skiff was exposed to space for the first time since the journey had begun months ago.

All green, Estero reported from the crew section. Forward plate is open, maximum.

Evers checked his displays for visual confirmation and did not bother looking through the viewport; from his current point of view he could directly see only a gray wall some twenty meters away; the interior wall of the bay which had sheltered the skiff. Roger that, he responded. Initiating cradle retraction.

The landers docked to the skiff at their neck collars, which was a structurally sound enough arrangement for in-system operations at low velocities. But that was too delicate a base of support for the many weeks of high-G travel they had to endure merely to arrive in-system; trusting the relatively small docking collars to withstand those forces for that long would have been foolhardy. A lander breaking loose inside the landing boat bay would have bounced around the inside of the great hollow, destroying everything it hit: the other landers and the skiff itself. The mother-ship would arrive at its destination carrying only rubble in its belly. The cradle Evers now retracted was a blend of struts and smart cables; the latter firmly strapped the landers to the solid base created by the former. The cables smoothly released their constrictor-like grips from the landers and pulled back into their bulky housings aboard the struts. Then the cage of struts pulled away from the skiff and landers in six discrete segments and retracted toward the walls of the bay, just far enough to provide three meters of clearance on each side of the skiff. This took twelve minutes, during which Evers and his team remained in constant communication, confirming each other’s readings and redundancy-checking every aspect of the operation. We are clear for separation, Evers said at last. Estero confirmed from his co-pilot’s station and a moment later, so did Maunder from navigation.

Evers did a final systems check, including contacting Durban for his final approval. The doctor had to ensure that the biological systems operating the skiff were up to the task, much as the biological systems themselves were checking up on the mechanical ones. Durban gave the green light; there were no current concerns with the operation of the systems called Evers, Estero, and Maunder.

Initiating detachment sequence. The last items of equipment physically securing the skiff to the landing boat were three ground vehicle-sized magnetic clamps. These secured the skiff’s hull at three points along its length – the forward clamp was not far from where the ionized telemetry instruments had damaged the hull – and were mounted on support columns which now slowly but smoothly telescoped outward, over the course of several minutes gently pushing the skiff out of the landing boat bay and out into the empty space of a strange solar system.

And with that, Evers had run out of systems to check, confirmations to request, and alternatives to launch. Despite the insanely dangerous nature of this type of mission in general, what with blasting through unknown space at high G for months at a time and trusting the ship to successfully get them into a safe solar orbit largely by itself, this was truly the most dangerous moment. Once they detached from the landing boat there was no margin for error; the four big thrusters would no longer be at their disposal and if they missed their orbital slot there was no turning around and trying again. The skiff’s single small F-drive was not capable of such a feat and even if it had been, the skiff’s frame was no longer supported by a cradle and not well suited to intense high-G maneuvers. Centuries of human effort dating back to old Earth now depended on getting a single set of calculations right and performing their jobs flawlessly.

No problem at all.

We are good to go, Evers told his crew. Good luck, gentlemen. We are detaching from landing boat at this time.

Roger that.

All good from this end.

With a bone-rattling thump the clamps released the skiff and simultaneously gave it a small electromagnetic repulsion to set it floating away from the landing boat. The long and delicate-looking orbiter now drifted alone in space, each second increasing the distance between the skiff and its former travelling companion by a half a meter. We have clean separation, Evers reported.

Nicely done, said Estero.

Evers ignored him; Estero was just being a smartass. The entire operation was automatically controlled by the computers. Buffer distance is now three meters. Orbital burn at fifty meters, so orbital burn in… call it two minutes.

Roger that. What’s another two minutes after waiting all our lives? Another two minutes since the Ice-Ship launched? It is but a hair on the ass-end of centuries.

Launch burn time will be seven minutes; total burn time nineteen point three minutes. The launch burn would be at higher thrust to get the skiff moving and would be followed by a longer and less intense acceleration; the humans needed to worry only about the first seven minutes as far as the effects of G-force went. Evers in his pilot’s seat, his crew strapped into rigging at the science station, and the medical personnel ensconced in the landers. Total flight time will be five point five days.

While he waited for the seconds to pass with maddening implacability, Evers checked the telemetry readings to see what he were able to pick up from the planetary observation system. In truth, there was very little. The incoming data were displayed on a small softscreen affixed to a systems housing to the pilot’s port side, although he could of course set the readouts to active so that they would appear in the five o’clock position of his visual field no matter which way he turned his head. There was no need for that at the moment and he would not have wanted the incoming results constantly in his sight and mind anyway. Several of the readings were displaying No Data. Others were fluctuating wildly, the changing numbers showing such discrepancies that they could not be trusted even as rough estimates. It was disconcerting and worrisome, but they were still a long way from CT-5 and the readings he was looking over were designed to be taken from orbit. In fact, some of the secondary devices were on the landers themselves, patched through to the skiff, and were designed to actually be used within the atmosphere of the target world. So there was no sense in assuming the worst just yet. The backup instrumentation would doubtlessly produce better results when they were in a reasonable range from the planet. In the meantime, the skiff would rely on its forward orbital sensors to get them safely to CT-5. The launch counter was approaching thirty seconds.

Half a minute. Last chance if you forgot anything, Evers said.

I think we forgot to lock the door, said Estero. And my family! Where’s my two wives and fourteen kids?

Evers had one other mild concern: the integrity of the skiff’s grid-work infrastructure where it had been compromised aft of the crew compartment. The computers and bots were convinced the struts would hold up adequately, but Evers could not help visualizing a scenario in which the force of acceleration crumpled the repaired beams and fan-folded the bow of the skiff, collapsing it into the central beam section and causing a catastrophic failure. The integrity of the section was checked by analyzing signals sent through the beams themselves, and these numbers Evers did have set to active display, floating just off his right eye like a rear-view mirror and currently showing a 98.992 confidence rating. Anything higher than a ninety was supposed to indicate that the section was in theory trustworthy, but Evers detested anything less than a nominal 99.981 or higher. Evers detested any number that ought to be higher. For instance, a pilot’s personal kilowatt allotment. Or the number of planetary observation instrumentation packages which ought to be installed on an orbital skiff.

Or, just possibly, the age of the Interim Governor who would be in charge of establishing this small human colony so far out in lonely space. She was in her twenties, for the love of ice! The first time the flight crew met her they all thought there had been a mistake. With her ponytail and her shy smile she had looked like a teenager. Could a woman so young actually lead?

Evers had his doubts. But now was not the time to think about politics.

The launch countdown remained active and he fought back a surge of uncharacteristic impatience as