The Long Road to Gaia (5 page)

The old man shuffled along. The corridor
was long, and seemingly endless. He wheezed and puffed, but he continued on.
No-one actually knew where he was. He'd made sure of that. He was so sick of
being told what he could, and could not do.

I followed after him. He'd refused to take
a wheeled method of transport. Not that he knew I'd asked him to. The trouble
was, he wasn’t as well as he thought he was.

For eighty years old, he certainly was in
good condition. His mind was still sharp, and his body, while deteriorating
once again, still managed to get him about. His trip to the Casa, all those
years ago, had done the trick. While not completely curing his medical issues,
they had been much reduced in nature, so that instead of an early medical
discharge, he'd retired on schedule.

He still had a few years left in him, and
Twelve had been congratulating me on getting him where he wanted, and needed,
to be.

All the same, long treks down endless
passageways at his age, showed more stubbornness than sense.

At last, he came to a window. The view
outside was breathtaking. He had paused at every window he had come across
since arriving, and each view was still breathtaking for him.

He'd never made it into the Space Shuttle
program. Never joined the crews of the International Space Stations. Never even
been able to pilot one of the civilian space orbiters. It had been a never
ending disappointment for him. He'd been born too early, and been too old by
the time space really became available, and simply not been the best of the
best, no matter how hard he'd strived all his life.

But now he was here, looking down on the
planet Earth from orbit. He'd made it anyway. At least he was in space at last.
And he'd damned well be sticking it out until they made it to the nearest
stars, as he'd known he would as a kid.

He gathered up his strength and continued
shuffling forward.

"Captain to Jon Hunter, respond
please."

The voice came through a speaker some way
ahead of him. He smiled as he realized the whole ship must have heard it. He
shuffled forward until he reached the speaker, and touched a button on the
wall. In all likelihood, his hand was the first to press it for real use. The
ship was so new, it still had a paint smell to it. The button isolated the
conversation.

"What is it Richard?"

"Where are you?"

"I don’t know. Somewhere on the left
flight pod, I think. It's got windows, if that helps you."

"Not really. Stay where you are, I'm
sending someone with a trolley to get you."

"Why?"

"It's almost time. Had you
forgotten?"

"Time for what?"

"To launch, Dad."

The exasperation in his voice made me smile
to myself. Jon might still have a sharp mind, but his short term memory had
been slipping lately.

"It's that time already?"

The sigh at the other end was almost
inaudible, but then, my hearing is better than anyone's. My smile grew bigger.

"Almost. Just wait there until someone
picks you up."

"Okay."

There was a snick sound as the connection
was turned off.

He turned and started shuffling the way
he'd been going.

The Bridge of Galactica was bustling with
activity. At the center of all the activity, was a small island of calm.

Richard Hunter, the captain, sat in his
chair, observing the activity with some satisfaction. After all, he'd made it
to the top at last. No longer a young man at sixty, he should have been put out
to pasture long ago. But the Navy is not the Air Force, and his choice of which
service to join had paid off. All his years in Submarines had made him the
number one choice for this post. Galactica was a space ship, but the nature of
it was more submarine, than aircraft.

His father shuffled in, and took the seat
which had been set aside for him, out of the way. Richard felt a moment of sadness
that his mother was no longer with them, but was comforted by the thought he
now had grandchildren of his own, albeit still very young, and that the whole
family was heading out into space.

He nodded to his father, whose vision of
this day had never wavered. He looked to the helm position, and nodded to his
son James, who'd won the coveted position on his own merits. Like his
grandfather, he'd joined the Air Force, but had chosen to fly the biggest planes
ever built, thus giving himself the experience to fly the biggest ship ever
built. Like his father, he shared his grandfather's dream of this day, and
where they were headed.

Richard shook off thoughts of family, and
brought himself completely into the now.

The launch was going to be a media circus,
but he'd managed to convince the brass to not allow any on the ship itself,
other than those who'd taken up the challenge of going into space with the rest
of them. Even then, they had their own media center, and could monitor the
cameras on the Bridge and other areas, as long as he allowed them the feeds.

This was a military ship, even though more
than three quarters of the people aboard were civilians. Most of the crew had
chosen to bring their families, and there were more civilian specialists than
military crew, plus their families.

It had been made very clear to everyone
who'd applied to join the ship on her maiden flight. This might be a one way
trip into the future. While assured the engines did not generate relativistic
effects, who actually knew? And when they arrived at the first of the anomalies
discovered five years earlier? What then? No-one knew. Guesses abounded. The
ship had a pool running about what they would find. But whatever it was, it
might prevent them ever returning home.

Six years before, one of many probes sent
out testing new space engines, had detected an anomaly out near the Oort cloud.
Months later, a second one had been detected on the other side of the system.
No-one knew what they were. Neither probe had enough control left to alter
their courses to investigate.

Richard had made a leap of intuition these
might be a way to other star systems, and I'd 'encouraged' him to make a
proposal for a manned explorer ship, which could also double as a colony seed
ship. He'd brought his father in to help him with the proposal, and even
allowed his son to contribute.

The governments of the time all rejected
not only his, but every proposal to build an exploration vessel. Not giving up,
he'd pushed every private resource he could, and in the end, a consortium of
Australian, American Indian, Malaysian Buddhist, and several other groups who
wanted to remain unknown; was formed to fund and build both a ship construction
platform in orbit, and a true explorer ship.

It took a lot of effort on my part to make
sure Richard was appointed to command the new ship. He'd been with it since the
beginning. He wanted to be with it to the end. Little did he know where the end
was.

I stood there on the Bridge, while the
checklists were run, double checked, and triple checked.

Navigation had the course to the nearest of
the anomalies. This was defined by where it was detected, and where the Earth
currently was in its orbit of the sun.

The Helm had the course from Navigation,
but it was just the last of a series of course changes needed, to get them away
from the construction platform, break orbit, and head out into space in the
correct direction.

I could see James was a mixture of cool
professionalism, high anxiety about his role in the launch, and the excitement
of being a key player in the most important event since the Wright brothers
first flew.

The checklists came to an end and the
political and military speeches began. I could see Richard internally cringing.
His eye was on the countdown clock. The bigwigs could say what they wanted, he
was launching on time, regardless of if he had to cut someone off in
mid-sentence. I knew he'd do it too.

As the timer neared zero, he gave his
orders. The access gantries retracted. The docking clamps were released.
Station keeping thrusters held them in position. Checks and rechecks to make
sure nothing still connected Galactica to the construction platform. We were
clear to go.

Right on zero, with the crew all looking at
him, he gave the most important order of any of their lives.

"Launch."

The engine section of Galactica exploded.
The force of it rippled up the ship, shattering the mid-section. The flight
pods were thrown clear, colliding with the construction platform and causing
its destruction as well.

For a moment, those on the Bridge thought
the bulkheads would hold, and their part of the ship would survive, but the
thoughts lasted mere seconds.

Thirty seconds after the launch order was
given, I was standing alone in space in the middle of a debris field.

"No!"

I stood there in space for a moment,
completely shocked.

Twelve materialized next to me.

"Don’t say it," I said.

"I wasn’t."

"Yes you were."

He looked at me, and it was obvious he'd
been about to.

"Are you going to just stand here in
the debris?"

"I'm planning a response."

"Less planning, more action."

"Thank you for the sage advice. Now
bugger off. I've got this."

Twelve chuckled, while shaking his head.
And was gone.

I wound back time slowly, to the moment
after the first explosion. I froze time there, and went in search of the blast
origin. It took me a while, but I found it in thruster control, just off the
main engine room.

I wound time back again, milliseconds at a
time, until the explosion began. Curious, it was coming from an enclosed
module, like a black box. The command to fire thrusters went through it, and
came out the other side unchanged. I checked the specifications all the way
back, and there it was, included in the original designs. I poked my head
inside and examined the contents.

It was a bomb. And a big one. Not a nuke,
but designed to be almost as powerful as a small nuke. It made sense though.
Conventional explosives could be masked. But masking a nuke was in itself
detectable.

Who would design a thruster control with
its own bomb? Someone a lot cleverer than I'd been considering myself,
obviously.

I wound back time again, following this
module back to when it was installed. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I
checked it to see if it was always a bomb, and it was. It was delivered, it was
installed, and it was tested. It was on the spec, and it seemed to do its job,
although no-one quite seemed to know what its job was, or had any idea what
they were actually messing with.

Time wound back further, now following the
module.

And, there.

The module had been switched in transit.
The two were identical on the outside. The original contained nothing but a
wire crossing the internal space.

I marked that moment, but followed back the
original. A man assembled the box, with a wire in the middle of it from a
specification, without question. I followed the specification back to the
person who designed it.

"Don’t," said Twelve.

"Don’t what?"

"You were about to kill him."

"What if I was?"

"Think about it. Killing isn’t
necessary."

I thought about it. He was right.

"So you think he should get away with
it?"

"Let me rephrase myself. Killing right
now isn’t necessary."

"Ah."

I grinned at him. Karma was a bitch, and
the man oblivious to our presence was going to find this out.

Twelve vanished again.

I returned to the point where the bomb was
swapped in. This time I followed the bomb back to where it was made. The same
man carefully assembled the bomb into the module.

I cast around looking for a reason why he
was doing this. It wasn’t until I followed him back several weeks, I discovered
who was really behind it. The group met in secret. I followed each of them back
six years, and finally came to the starting point.

A woman and a man were watching television.
They were alone in what could only be called a mansion. Everything around them
simply dripped money.

The news item declared an anomaly had been
discovered on the edge of the solar system, and was followed by several people
calling for a manned probe to be sent to investigate.

"No," said the woman in a cold
hard voice.

"No," said the man, in a high
emotional voice.

The two looked at each other.

"This cannot happen," she said.
"God will not allow it. Do what must be done."

The man nodded, rose, and left.

I followed them forward to the moment of
the explosion, and found them all in the same place it had started.

I smiled.