Chapter 18

…[ MATIVO ]…

Kanyele had finally messaged me back about the engine core he had been working on. And the news was disappointing to me. Him, he seemed excited enough with the results he had gained. It had taken him more than a month to reply, that irked me something bad. His degree of progress was among the fastest ever known to humans, but I wished he had responded sooner. Because, clearly from his message, the breakthrough had been made weeks before. Jumping the gun, he was trying to avoid, but what did I care about that.

The good news was that they had managed to stabilize the Light Core. What they had dumped it now that they had it under control. I thought the name was dumb and unimaginative, but when I tried to come up with a name of my own, I was stumped.

The bad news, if you didn’t think the name was bad news, was that they had lost a portion of its speed capabilities. Its current maximum safe speed was theorized at Light 6. A single point drop in the Light Scale, but half the previous top speed at 64c. What was the point of that stability if it took away half the speed? I knew I was being unrealistic, but that drop was a huge derailment of my plans. For my near term plans, I needed speeds to the tune of hundred thousand times the speed of light in vacuum. Maybe I needed other ways to traverse the universe.

But he promised that he would be back on track by the time we made it to Earth. He didn’t look sure of himself. All I could do was wait and see. Wait and see.

I moved on to the security report. I was expecting a huge break in their case. Or was it my case? But they didn’t deliver. In fact, they had ruled out any involvement with Juniver. The case had gone back to being wide open. Anyone and everyone was a suspect again.

Now the message from that person from Union seemed all the more ominous. What if they already knew that I was having troubles figuring out who had tried to kidnap? It could be that they wanted to laugh at me. Knowing it was them, and me not figuring it out. I decided I was not going to go their mining colony. If one could call it that.

With my security office proving incapable of unearthing my enemy, my capabilities to protect myself were seeming all the more important. There was always the possibility that the perpetrator would have learnt before we returned to Earth, and came up with a way to successfully kidnap me. Anyway I thought it, my life was in danger and I currently had no sure way of protecting myself.

My Comms beeped reminding me of my scheduled meeting with the senior officers. It was about helping me come to a decision on whether to go to the mining colony or not. But I had just decided not to go. I thought of cancelling the meeting, but it would seem rude. It was best to just go through the steps. I mentally prepared myself and tidied my quarters in preparation for the meeting. In the ship, there were no caretakers, I had to do everything myself. Maybe that would be a job in the next expedition. They would be there in the ships exploring the Solar System after we returned. Though those were Luxury Class ships, while Robin was an Explorer Class ship.

I was the last to arrive at the conference. Technically, I wasn’t last. But I was in the group that walked in last; me, Park and Mina. And I walked in ahead of them, so yes I wasn’t last to arrive. There were more people; there was the usual crew from the Bridge, then the five Chiefs, and finally Jacy’s group of scientists. I took a seat to Jacy’s left while Park sat at my left.

“Why are we here this time?” Mũthiani asked, clearly showing he would rather be doing something else.

“Yeah. I don’t remember there been anything needing our attention.” Strom added, but at least she showed interest.

“Things have been nice lately. I enjoyed Titan more than I thought I would.” Mina commented

“When you start saying things like that, you jinx us.” Mũthiani said reproachfully. “We are still billions of kilometers away from Earth, we still need be careful.”

“Come on, this is a room, scratch that, a ship full of scientists, no one believes in the superstitious view of things.” At least she didn’t call it superstitious nonsense.

“Better safe than sorry, is all I’m saying.”

“There are no risky ventures we have left.”

“No risky?” Xhalo raised a brow at her.

“Okay. The risk is not as great as it was at Jupiter.” She placated, raising her hands. “You cannot seriously compare exploring Neptune or Uranus to the missions of the Jupiter System.”

“Even a scalpel can kill you.”

“Fine I will be more careful of what I say henceforth.”

“Thank you.”

“Only what you say?” Chantel asked over Xhalo’s gratitude. “Not also what you do?”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t you pay more attention to what you do out here than to what you say?”

“Come on, I just—”

“People, you are losing track of what brought us here.” Cindy tried to bring them back to topic.

“Which is? We still don’t know.” Mũthiani pointed out the obvious.

“If you would shut up for ten seconds, maybe you would know then.”

After a few seconds of silence, I said, “I have received an invitation to visit one of the mining colonies at the Asteroid Belt.”

“I thought we weren’t visiting any of the mining colonies.” Mũsonde said.

“We weren’t. And still aren’t.”

“Which one?” Mũsango asked. She had been uncharacteristically quiet.

“USK Mining Colony.”

“The Union one?” Matt asked.

“The one and only.” Pon said, while Chantel was less polite,

“Is there any other USK Mining Colony you know of?”

“I’ve always wanted to visit it. I hear they have the most advanced space mining technology known to humans.” Matt said, appearing unaffected by Chantel’s outburst.

“Maybe we should have borrowed some of that technology for our drilling missions.” That coming from Mũsango was understandable. After all, she had been part of the group buried alive on Ganymede.

“Maybe we should have.” I couldn’t help but agree with her. It had started looking like my eagerness to get on with the expedition had left us not fully prepared for all the things we had wanted to do.

“So, where do they want us?” Mũthiani asked.

“At their Mining Colony you dumbass.” Okay, Chantel needed to cool down. And she appeared to have noticed that she had gone a bit out of line. It had been uncalled for, no matter how grating the question was. Then again, those two were never in sync in the meetings.

“Fine! Are we going or not?” Mũthiani’s tone had worsened too.

“That’s what we are here to decide.”

“I’m not sure if it was made for me alone or the whole ship.”

“What do you mean?” Strom asked.

“It was send to my personal message account, and not the ship’s.”

“The same one they used when they were trying to buy you out?” Finally, one of them spoke and it was a question I would have wished not asked.

“No. They used the… Oh. Yeah, it’s the same one.”

“What? They tried to buy you out? When?” Mũsango asked question after question. Then added another, “And why isn’t it common knowledge?”

“Because they contacted him through his personal message account. And Mativo isn’t in the habit of telling people his personal matters. Well, except this time.”

“She knew.” Mũthiani stated, staring at Jacy. They all just stared at him.

“You mean…” I started to say, but as I trailed off, Cindy finished the thought for me.

“It’s you they want.”

“When you put it that way—”

“She didn’t mean it like that. She meant that they want a meeting with you.” Jacy was quick in trying to stop me from panicking.

“A meeting with them could end up like that.” I reminded her. Not having forgotten about the kidnapping incident.

“Highly unlikely. A lot of people are watching you right now.”

“They could—”

“I think I speak for the rest of us here when I say you have lost us.” Mina interrupted me, to remind us of where we were.

“Huh? Oh!” Jacy looked at me in askance before continuing when she understood it was okay. “He thinks they are behind the attempt to kidnap, or kill, him.”

“Someone tried to kill you!?” Xhalo was understandably surprised. As Chief Security Officer, that kind of information was pertinent to him. Come to think of it, why hadn’t my personal security officers notified him? I would have thought they would have.

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“Or Kidnap.” Strom pointed out the part left out of Xhalo’s exclamation.

“Yeah.”

“When?” Chantel asked. “And come on, these things should be made public.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything.” I told her.

“You still haven’t told—”

“It was weeks leading up to the Departure.” Jacy answered her prior question.

“They were trying to stop us from leaving?” Mũthiani asked, subdued for the first time since the meeting started.

“We don’t know that.”

“Without Mativo, dead or kidnapped, I doubt this ship would have lifted off the ground.” In a rare moment, Chantel supported Mũthiani.

“If its them that tried to kill you, then you cannot go.” Xhalo said.

“It isn’t them. Union are good.” Mũsonde said, of all of them, he was the only one with close ties with them. I wasn’t sure if it was family relations or just family friends.

“You know they could be—”

“No. They are good good.”

“I have to agree with him. It is not Union.” Cindy added more weight to Mũsonde’s statement. And I could see several people nodding across the table.

“If it’s not Union, then he should go.” Mina said.

“Why?”

“You already turned them down on the buyout.” Strom argued for her.

“That is not reason enough—”

“The ship is not going though.” Cindy added, completely ignoring me.

It is already decided. “What if I need moral support?” And the conference room erupted in laughter. “What?”

It took them a whole minute to calm down. I was so glad they found mirth at my suffering. Cindy picked up where she had left at.

“Who else will be going aside from Jacy and Mativo?”

“Anyone who wants to visit USK Mining Colony.” Chantel answered.

“There could be more than a single shuttle can transport.”

“I doubt it.” Mũthiani said. “Very few are actually interested in the process itself. People just like what comes out after the mining is done.”

“Do you think they will let you see anything? Or even let you enter?”

“They know Mativo won’t be coming alone. They must be prepared for us.” Jacy groaned at that, forcing Mũthiani to stop talking and look at her. “What?... Oh, I meant that they are prepared to meet us… You know what, I’m just going to stop talking now.”

“Much appreciated.”

The meeting devolved into strategizing how the whole trip would proceed after we left Uranus. It was decided since we would be further out of the direct route planned for the expedition, the ship would wait for us at the last asteroid they would visit. We would join them, and then proceed to Mercury. Of the five people that I had personally invited, only Jacy had contributed at the meeting. It wasn’t that people were required to, but I had thought they would have had something to say about the topic. The meeting adjourned and Jacy quickly left to prepare for her race. Yes, we were already at Neptune. Actually, we were days away from leaving Neptune for Uranus.

The current distribution of the planets in the Solar System put all the Outer planets in the same quadrant. When we got to Saturn, the distance to the other two and between them was roughly the same, around twenty, twenty-one astronomical units. But Uranus was closer to the area of the Asteroid Belt that we wanted to explore on our way back to the Inner planets. So we visited Neptune first.

Neptune, Neptune, Neptune. What to say about you old geezer? Neptune just appeared blue. There were no clouds that we could see. Like they had all been washed away. There was a Dark Spot forming in the southern hemisphere, but it wasn’t big enough to be called a Great Dark Spot.

Of the moons, only Triton was clearly visible at our current position. The others occasionally appeared as specks of light in the black background. The few missions that had been planned had already been finished. One, because Neptune didn’t have much to offer us. Maybe those focused more on the history and workings of the Solar System would garner much from Neptune, but we didn’t have anyone of those on board Robin.

The second reason being that people were eager for the shuttle race. I didn’t think they understood that we as spectators would barely be able to see much of it. We also didn’t have the technology to record it other than from the onboard cameras of the shuttles. It would be a seventeen-minute wait and then Robin would tell who had won. I was more curious if any of them would get to the 1c mark.

…[ JACY ]…

Jacy was nervous; understandably so. They were already out of the ship, drifting a few kilometers from it. To the untrained observer, they appeared still. Waiting for the start of the shuttle race. She had had less time than she would have wanted to be prepare for it. Truth be told, there was nothing much in terms of preparation. Unless one counted mental preparedness.

She was on the far left side, with more than two hundred meters between her and Noah to her right. He had Igorson to his right, with roughly the same distance between them. Nthambi was to the far right. They were all facing Neptune. The race would take them on an orbit around it equivalent to the distance light would cover in seventeen minutes. Most people just called it the One AU Turnabout race. They weren’t that far off.

“Ready!” The message appeared at the front Display of the shuttle, at the same time sounding through the shuttle speakers.

“9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. GO!!!”

And they were off.

She had been nervous that she might be slow on the start, but looking to her left showed her on level with her competitors. Which somewhat surprised her. She had thought that once the race started, they would be moving too fast to see each other. She had never watched the outside during their cruise times; and she had not been prepared for the view.

At the front of her, the view seemed to have moved further away from her, and gained a red tint to it. The further ahead the stars were, the more red they appeared. As they got closer the red tint slowly disappeared returning them to their original colors. Which soon started gaining a blue tint as they moved past her. She appeared to be able to see all the way to the back, but somehow still couldn’t see the back, or side, of her shuttle.

The so called fascinating shuttle race was pretty boring. Other than the dazzling colors brought about by moving at speeds near the speed of light, everything else was mundane. The course was completely clear of any obstacles they might be forced to try and clear. There was enough distance between them that the risk of colliding with each other was not there. And if it looked like collision was about to happen, there was enough space to steer clear of the oncoming shuttle.

Looking at her speed reading showed her to be moving at approximately 0.94c. Since the main goal of the race was to try and get to 1c, she had work to do. This was where piloting skills would come to matter. Optimizing the power directed to the shuttle engines from the engine core for efficiency and more power.

When she looked at her competitors again, she realized that she had started to lag behind. And they appeared way closer to her now than they had been when they started the race. Either she drifted towards them during her moment of inattention, or they were actively trying to box each other in. Trying to get ahead of competition to force the others to either slow down or take a long way around to get ahead.

And true enough, they quickly moved ahead of each other. And her, putting her dead last. They hadn’t covered a tenth of the journey and she was already tailing. She kept steadily trying to move to the left or right of the shuttle ahead of her, but each time they responded in kind. At first she had been perplexed how they could figure out where she was aiming for when she herself couldn’t see behind her.

That’s when she remembered that the shuttles, same as the ship, had cameras all round them for a complete spherical view. Opening a window to the top of her front Display showed nothing remarkable behind her; except for the blue tinted objects receding faster from her. There was nothing else. And there wouldn’t be because everyone else was ahead of her.

She kept working the engines, trying to get more speed out of them. At first, her efforts seemed to bear no fruits at all, but she noticed the steady closing of the distance between her and third place. This time, she didn’t try and get to one of their sides. Nor top or below them. She aimed at them and waited. The closer she got to them the faster she got. Her speed was already halfway passed 0.94c. As she got too close for comfort, they swerved to the left, while she did so to the right. Not as much as they swerved though, allowing her to cleanly make it passed them. And as she did, her speed got to 0.95c.

Ahead of her, the others seemed to have been pulling ahead while she had been stuck at last place. The distance no longer looked to be increasing, or decreasing at any noticeable rate. She concluded that they too, had made it to 0.95c at the very least.

What followed was a few long minutes of uninterrupted flying. In her rearview Display window, she was still adding more distance between her and last place. While the front two didn’t seem to giving ground to her at all. They seemed to be engaged in a kind of dog fight. Swerving left and right, up and down. Sometimes they even switched positions.

As her speed approached the upper half of 0.95c, they appeared to have gotten closer to her. If it weren’t her imagining things. They immediately swerved in the opposite directions, bringing to view a large piece of rock hurtling towards her. She barely managed to get below it as it went past her. She could have sworn she felt the shuttle react to such a close encounter.

It took her several seconds to gain her composure. When she checked her calculated location, she realized that they had already made it two thirds of the way to Neptune. That rock must have been either Neso or Psamathe, Neptune’s outer moons.

The shuttle was already speeding past 0.96c, and she had received no warning from the engines. She felt comfortable pushing them further still. Mativo had warned them; telling them to keep track of how the core was behaving. It wouldn’t do to have it lose stability and destroy the shuttle, killing them in the process. Jacy doubted any of them would listen to that warning. Especially not when she had caught up with the leading two. They hadn’t made it to 0.96c.

They tried to block her, they really did. But Jacy looked for the next nearest moon in her navigator and aimed for it. Keeping at a course that would be meters away from it. She knew what they would do then. At first she thought they might realize and get out early on but they didn’t. As they got closer, they tried hiding it from view. But it still forced them to get out of its way. While she breezed straight past it.

But she never made it fully past them. She had inadvertently sandwiched herself between them. But still kind of ahead of them. They must have caught up to her in speed. They began a chaotic dance of trying to force her back by pressing into her from both sides. Since her speed wasn’t enough to get ahead of them, if they caught her, she would be forced to slow down to avoid damage to her shuttle.

But she was as good a pilot as any of them, maybe even better. She moved above and below, to their left and right. Always in the nick of time. Always trying to force them to clash into each. But they were just as good. And it turned into a jumble of positions. No one ever really staying in the center for long.

They kept at it jostling to stay away from the center. Jacy checked her shuttle navigator, trying to see if there were any other nearby moons she could use to lose them. She came up empty. It was clear space ahead. The jostling also meant that the energy she had being directing to increasing her speed was being used to maneuver around her other two competitors. Her speed as a consequence had stopped raising. If they kept at it for long, she might soon start bleeding speed. That was unacceptable in a race. And she intended to win this race.

As it was, she was in the pole position, if only barely. Any miniature lapse in judgement, and they could end up ahead of her. She took advantage of an opening to the left, and went out of the jostle. Putting distance between her and the other two, even if only lateral. She immediately used that break from the jostling to redirect more power for speed, gaining a few points and pulling ahead of them. And further out of the course than she intended. It meant she would have to cut the turn closer to Neptune than the others if she wanted to have any hope of coming out of the turn with them.

It had the risk of her loosing too much speed when she got too close. There was also the possibility that she could gain it back as she got out. But they would have pulled ahead by then. She pulled below their plane of travel as she crossed into the turn. Her speed dipped as Neptune made a grab for her; but she was already pulling out.

But they had made it past her anyway. Just barely, but still enough that she was no longer first place. A weak second at best. Looking at her speed reading showed it still raising, creeping closer to 0.97c as she left the grips of Neptune. It then shot past going near 0.98c, helping her pull ahead of them again. On her rearview window, they didn’t appear to be gaining at all. Maybe even losing ground.

With no further obstacle ahead of her, and no competitors to jostle with, she focused all her energy into speed. The engine core responded by giving the engines enough power to easily bring her to 0.99c. The other competitors disappeared from the rearview Display completely. And a yellow warning was raised about the instability of the engine core.

She felt that she could break it to 1c, so she held on through the yellow warning, watching as the speed steadily get closer and closer to 1c. As it closed over, the warning went straight to red. But only for a few seconds before dropping back to yellow. It stayed that way, until the ship came into, and the shuttle Display filled with the message ‘You Win!!’ after closing the point marking the end of the race.

She steadily slowed the shuttle down, bringing it out of the finish area and towards the Shuttle Bay, as the other two finished hot on her heels. But still, hundreds of thousands of kilometer behind her. It took a lot more seconds for the last one to finish.