Amethyst planet

Pulsar Sky System

Grace returned to the captain’s tomb and set up her slate for a deep level scan. The walls were stone and cavernous; it almost appeared to be a natural formation. The stone coffin was hewn from a different source and brought down here. It wouldn’t have been easy carrying those enormous blocks through the long, narrow tunnels, assuming, of course, they were brought by conventional means.

Whoever the being Grace had encountered earlier was now running the risk of undermining archaeology as a profession by introducing the concept that any discovery might simply have been via his intervention.

The slate beeped. Grace moved around and picked it up. A new window opened and announced the current scan was completed. Below that was a breakdown of everything it had determined. The coffin itself was made from granite, a much lighter grey than the hue stone walls. The slate also indicated there was something else in the coffin. Grace opened the lid carefully, sliding it down to the ground as delicately as she could without damaging it. She couldn’t see anything else in the coffin; the remains had all been taken out by Chase and his team. For all intents, it was empty.

The slate likewise did not specify exactly what it had found; it was merely indicating another object was in there. That was unusual.

Grace reached down and felt with her hand. The stone was cold to the touch, and she couldn’t find anything obvious in there. When she reached the bottom of the coffin, she felt a section of stone that was much looser than the rest of it. There were several grooves she could get her fingers into pulled the base up. Inside the hidden compartment lay a small green crystal.

She lifted the crystal and set it down on the corner of the coffin, lowering herself to get a better view. It wasn’t exactly a gemstone but it still glinted in front of her eyes. Picking up the slate and starting a scan did not give her any firm details on its exact make-up. Potentially, it was exceptionally valuable simply from being a rare gemstone, but Grace suspected that there was something more to it than that.

As she turned it around. A soft glow pulsing in the centre within the crystal projected a holographic display into the centre of the room.

Whilst holograms were reasonably commonplace for communications, entertainment, and information, there were also limitations to the image quality. The frequent distortions and refreshing meant no one would ever confuse a hologram for the real thing. This projection, however, looked exceptionally lifelike. If Grace had not seen it activate, she would have simply assumed this man was already in the room with her. Whatever she was dealing with, she doubted it was human technology.

Grace waved her hand in front of the man. He was old and wearing the same outdated Earth naval uniform last seen in the Captain’s coffin. It took a moment, but she recognised Captain Wellesley of the Battleship Trafalgar.

“Hello again,” Grace said. She wasn’t sure if she expected a reply, but the hologram did not give her one. Whether it was programmed with an artificial personality or who knows what the species was capable of—it could have transferred his entire consciousness into the crystal for all Grace knew. But there was no sign that anything was going on behind those projected eyes.

Grace walked around him; the detail was just as sharp from behind. Waving an arm, it passed through the projection, distorting slightly as it did so. Grace felt nothing as her hand passed through it, half-expecting an electric jolt.

She began to walk away when it started to speak.

“My name is Captain Wellesley, and this is my story.”

Okay, thought Grace, so it’s a recording. Cool.

“I come from a planet called Earth,” he continued. “It is unlikely you’re familiar with it, as it is on the far side of this galaxy. Our ship has an experimental jump drive, and on its maiden flight, we arrived in this solar system. It had not been our intended destination, nor were we able to return. Our sub-light engines could not make the trip in our lifetime,” the hologram explained.

Grace wondered if this was part of the captain’s recordings, or a persona extracted from whoever was able to create this hologram. She rushed back around the coffin, grabbing her slate, almost dropping it and began to record.

“We were unsure why we were so far off course, so I was not willing to attempt a second jump,” said the hologram.

Grace thought that wise. “It’s lucky they didn’t land in the middle of a star.”

“The first flight of the Trafalgar was an auspicious day. I had fought off severe competition to be assigned as her captain,” the hologram said. Grace almost expected him to pace the room, but the projection stayed in the same spot. “There had been several attempts at FTL travel, and conventional sub-light drives had allowed us to colonise much of our solar system. The Centauri colonies had been founded with the use of sleeper ships,” he said.

Grace had written a paper about this, they would leave the crew in suspended animation to make the decades-long trips, knowing they would not age whilst any friends or loved ones on Earth would. The prospect was something that Grace had always been unnerved by and had never wanted to wake up and be told it was decades later and her friends were dead.

The hologram carried on. “The jump drive was supposed to be a remarkable step forward, the ability to simply go from one position to another anywhere in the cosmos in an instant. And it worked; it was a remarkable success. We found ourselves here only seconds after we left Earth’s orbit. However, we did not know where ‘here’ was. It took some time, but our navigators pinpointed our position. Using sub-light drives, it would take a century or more to reach Earth. Obviously, this was not an option, and I didn’t trust the jump drive to take us back. To be quite honest, we never found out why we went so far off course. This distressed me for years. Now I wonder if knowing the truth wouldn’t be more disheartening now that all this time has passed,” the hologram said, pausing for a moment as if to draw breath.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Grace leaned over and read timecode on her slates recording, making sure it was getting all of this.

“We found ourselves in the solar system you are currently in. We made contact with the Amethyst. They were a reserved people who, whilst welcoming, valued their territory. They offered us the use of a small moon. We landed on this world and traded with them when we could. We could manufacture certain tools and produce food and drinks, some of which the Amethyst were happy to barter for. With a heavy heart, I ordered my crew to abandon ship, and we settled on that moon. It was difficult at first; the winters could be very long. Technically, the regs handed me broad powers to keep people in check, but it never came to that. We had supplies from the Trafalgar to get us through the worst of it until we got things up and running.”

Grace could barely imagine what it must be like to have been living on the frontiers like that. She would not have wanted to be in that position for anything. Grace was very curious as to the holograms power source. There was nothing external connected to it.

“Eventually, it became our home,” continued the hologram. “Of course, we always hoped another ship might track us down and allow us to return to Earth, but we made the best of what we had. When I disbanded the crew, they were able to intermingle as they wished, without concerns of rank. The town grew beyond the initial population as some of us began to marry and have children. It’s still going strong. I founded a colony, somewhere that will outlive me. It’s quite remarkable, really,” said the hologram.

Grace had to agree. Whilst it wasn’t what he had set out to achieve, he had certainly done so, which was a remarkable achievement. If things had not gone so terribly wrong beyond the control of the colonists, there’s nothing to say that the Trafalgar’s descendants couldn’t still be operating the colony today. The hologram seemed to wind up its speech. Grace reached into her bag and grabbed her canteen, having a swig of water as he signed off. The projection stopped.

Grave moved through to the next room. There were more historical records, and she found another crystal. It’s appearance was the same as the one in the captain’s tomb, and, of course, she had activated it. Another hologram, this time of a much younger man wearing clothes that appeared to probably be made by hand, be made by hand, no doubt a generation or two later than the ship's original crew. He was in his early thirties with light skin and dark hair. The hologram began speaking.

“My name is Terence,” the hologram said. Grace was still taken in by how real these projections were. “I am making this recording on our seventy-sixth year. We were contacted by our allies, the Amethyst, from a neighbouring planet. Their astrophysicists detected what the casual observer would describe as a new star in the sky. They, however, turned their nose up at this description, insisting it was a ship travelling very fast and now there are early signs of a missile launch. We aren’t sure how they detected us at such long-range,” he said.

Grace wondered who this person was. He was far too young to be a member of the Trafalgar’s crew, going by the given dates and the look of him. Presumably he was one of the crew’s offspring, if not a grandchild.

“Amethyst have activated a cloaking field that will shield their world from detection by outsiders. Whilst they have always been reserved in the technology, they have been willing to share with us. However they are unable to extend the range across the system, leaving our moon of New Tahiti vulnerable. We have started, with their help, digging underground tunnels to offer some protection.”

That explained it, thought Grace. The tunnels had been built in anticipation of orbital bombardment.

These guys never caught a break, did they? she thought to herself. The hologram flickered momentarily, returning with an updated image. There had been some time between recordings. The man now looked far more distressed.

“We’ve been living down here for two months. Some of us had doubted the necessity of it and returned to the surface. I doubt they survived.” He was openly weeping. “We’ve not had any more signals from the Amethyst since the attack. The ship came into range, and missiles were fired from outside the system. We hoped the cloaking field was activated in time to keep them from being detected, but the artillery rained down on them without warning or mercy. It is unlikely that anyone survived. But we don’t know if it’s safe to return to the surface yet, and they, in their last message, gave us strict instructions not to attempt contact until it was absolutely safe to do so. And the ship is still in the system.”

Grace wondered what these logs were in aid of. Simply cataloguing what was happening? Or had they been intended for some specific purpose? Here they were, being watched by her. There wasn’t much she could do with the information now. It had all long since played out long ago.

She pulled out her slate and ran a deep-level scan for human remains, seeing as the colony appeared to be abandoned. Would she now find them?

“I have included in this recording all our sensor data on the intruder’s ship. Perhaps whoever receives this will make better use of it than we could,” he said.

At that moment, he turned and looked straight at her, and if Grace had not known any better, she would have sworn that he made eye contact. It sent a chill through her.