It was dark out here, dark and cold. So far out that the light from the sun was barely brighter than the faint stars dotting the sky. The sparse light reflected the gleam of silver from an object hanging in this particular spot in space. It was clearly artificial, though with no sign of whom or what had made it.
Over a kilometre in diameter this massive ring of metal and plastics was spotted here and there, with an array of antennae, hatches and all manner of technological detritus. It had hung here unused for some time, deserted by its previous masters. Now though this abandoned station was slowly bringing itself back to life. Lights that hadn’t shone in over three hundred years now blazed out into the void.
The ring began to rotate. The inner surface spinning clockwise on some unseen mechanism as the outer began to turn the opposite. Faster and faster, they turned until both were a blur of silver metal. At the centre, the darkness seemed to grow deeper, as if looking into a deep, dark hole. Arcs of white lightning crawled over the surface of both rings, linking them together as they spun.
Suddenly and with an almighty flash of pure white light, everything stopped. The great wheel hung in space once more, fins sprouting along its side glowing cherry red as they tried to cool this monstrous engine. It was no longer alone out here. Drifting in the void beside it was a ship. Four hundred metres long, lozenge shaped and made of a dull grey reflective metal it floated there, gently twisting as if trying to collect its bearings. Lights blinked along its length as antennae extended and shutters slid back over viewing ports.
One such port looked in on a spartanly furnished office. All bare metal and plastics, the desk, drawers and cabinet were simple and unadorned. As the shutter slid away, the man sitting at the desk glanced up, nodded once as if in acknowledgement and continued tapping away at his keyboard. In the reflection from the screen he was working at, he could see a single loose thread on one of his three silver epaulette bands. As he reached up to pluck the offending thread he spotted a few more annoyances. Dark brown stubble had begun to sprout across his chin and shaved scalp. Short enough to be within regulations but scruffy nonetheless. Staring at the screens too long had given him dark bags under his blue eyes that made them look melancholy rather than the usual stern. Finally, and most frustrating was the tiny coffee splash on his otherwise immaculate grey uniform. Typical. The contrast between the two would inevitably draw the eye. He frowned, stood up and made for the cabinet on the other side of the room. A chime sounded. He scowled deeper and sat back at his desk.
“Enter!” he shouted.
The door slid open and a young woman in a similar (but less tidy) uniform stepped smartly into the centre of the room.
The man at the desk looked at her; she was wearing the same grey two-piece uniform as he with only minor differences. A patch on her left shoulder bore the insignia of the stewards, those movers and gophers on the ship. The kind of person who brings the coffee. While his epaulettes had three silver cloth bands (and one errant thread) hers bore only one bronze band. Her pale blonde hair was neatly bound up in a regulation bun. She was pretty, he supposed, a round face with a strong jawline, clever green eyes and fair skin that was rapidly reddening under his scrutiny. He realised he had been staring at her for just long enough for it to be uncomfortable. Still frowning he laid his hands on the desk, fingers interlaced.
“Well?” he asked, his voice a bass rumble in the otherwise silent room.
She somehow managed to stand even straighter and fixed her eyes on the wall just above his head.
“Sir!” she said in a clear but nervous voice. “Ensign Sands reporting. Captains compliments and can you see him at a staff officer meeting in briefing room two at 1130hrs ship time.”
The officer at the desk grunted, “And why is it that the captain is sending stewards to pass messages when we have a perfectly usable communication system?”
“Sir, it was the transit. In all the” - she paused as she searched for the right word - “excitement the captain dropped his com tablet and it got… crushed.” This raised a pair of eyebrows on the other side of the desk.
“Crushed?” He asked, fixing her with a glare, “And how exactly did that happen? No wait, let me guess. Do I have the agent of its demise standing before me?”
Her face was already red from his overlong stare but now it threatened to turn scarlet. “Yes sir”, she said meekly, “I was on the bridge to bring the drinks when the transition occurred, it was knocked off the desk as I passed and” - she swallowed and closed her eyes as she finished - “run over by my trolley, sir.”
The eyebrows dropped back into a scowl.
“And as punishment he sent you here, to interrupt me whilst I attempt to update the stores with a pointless message and a request for a new tablet?” the officer asked.
Face burning, she could only nod. With a sigh he turned to his screen and tapped out a string of commands.
“There, done. You can collect another one from stores. It’ll be ready in an hour. I suppose now I’m supposed to dispense some kind of disciplinary shouting? Tell you off for being a clumsy coffee carter?” he said with an even tone. She nodded, once. He let the moment hang for a while, again just on the wrong side of uncomfortable before saying, “Well in all honesty it’s not worth my time or effort to bother, so consider yourself told off,” he waved his hand at the door, “so kindly fuck off and stop breaking my things.”
She stood there, a small mammal seeing the approaching lights. He glared and raised his voice slightly.
“Did you not hear me? I said Get. The fuck. Out. Of my. Office!” She fled leaving him to the faint echoes of his shout and the quiet hum of his ventilation fan.
Two hours later a freshly shaved and dethreaded officer stepped into briefing room two and took his place amongst the others.
Captain Haines looked up from his new tablet and smiled.
“James! Good timing as always. I believe I have you to thank for this?” he said holding up the tablet. The light caught on the reflective surface. Almost as bright as the gold epaulette on his shoulder. He was a small man, both in height and build but made up for it with a quick mind and dedication. A smile beamed out behind a short, neatly clipped blonde beard and his blue eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Not a problem sir, I was working through requisition reports when your messenger arrived. She mentioned something about excitement?” said Quartermaster L. T. James with a grunt.
The captain chuckled sheepishly eliciting a few grins from the assembled officers,
“Well it’s not every day you captain a ship through a transmission station and survive. I checked we’re the first ones in over three hundred years! Wait… you were doing paperwork during transit? Seriously?”
James shrugged,
“if we passed through then the paperwork would still need doing. If it didn’t work we’d be dead before anyone noticed so I didn’t see the point of being worried.”
The other officers stared at the taciturn quartermaster before the chief engineer sitting next to him barked out a harsh laugh, “Cold as space this one! I reckon we could use him to chill the transit ring sir. Probably take half the time!" This got another round of quiet laughter, including from the captain.
“Fair point. If we ever start getting shot at on this little trip of ours, remind me to put James in charge!” Captain Haines said with a grin. Once the laughter quietened down, the captain brought the meeting to a start. “First off status reports. Chief?”
The chief engineer cleared her throat, “Engines are running well within tolerance sir, we’re still at 70% capacity for fuel and the coolant feeds are well in the blue” she said while checking her tablet. She ticked off a point and continued “we lost two of the comms antennae during transit but nothing we don’t have spares for. The transit station itself is still in its cooling phase and I’d like to officially make a request to study it on our way back.”
The captain nodded, “Write it up and I’ll approve it later.” He looked at the next officer. “Dr Hudd, do we have any medical issues to be aware of?”
The chief medical officer, a tall middle aged man who’s round, almost cherubic face was split horizontally by a large twisted scar glanced down at his tablet before replying “Captain, I only have one issue of note. An engineer was transitioning between decks at the precise moment of,” he checked his notes, “rematerialisation. Apparently there was a brief but noticeable shift in the gravity at that precise point. He was on a ladder at the time. Two cracked ribs, a sprained ankle and a broken nose. He’s in the medical bay complaining about the food.”
The captain looked over to the Chief engineer, “Will this cause a problem Jenn?” he asked.
Chief Jenn Somore finished tucking an errant strand of black hair behind her ear and shook her head, “No sir, he was coming off shift. I’ve changed the rotas around to account for it.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Captain Haines nodded and made a note on his new tablet “Very good, right… navigation, what do you have for us?”
The nav officer tapped a few buttons on his screen causing a projection to hum into life over the table. It was a solar system. One large yellow star and eight (nine if you wanted to start an argument) planets arrayed around it. He gestured at a glowing ring, “We are here. We’ve taken parallax observations of visible stars and can confirm our position in the Sol system.” He paused for effect, earning him a frown and a ‘hurry it up’ motion from the quartermaster.
“As stated in the original briefing our first objective was to achieve Mars orbit and observe before committing to phase two. Unfortunately, since its last recorded use, the transit station has drifted from its original position so while we are close to the orbit path of Mars it is currently at its aphelion.” An orange ring circled the red planet. “Whilst we are near the perihelion,” a blue dot labelled ‘Donatello’ blipped into existence on the opposite side of the sun. “Simply put it’s on the other side of the sun and about as far away as we can get. To this end we have plotted courses to all known inhabited planets before the Exodus. As it happens the closest of these is the Homeworld”. One by one lines extended from the blue to dot to each of the planets marked on the display. The shortest and simplest of these terminated at a familiar blue/green marble.
What followed was a buzz of questions from the assembled officers. The captain let this continue for a few more seconds before bringing the meeting back to its point. “It can’t be helped. It would waste far too much time travelling to Mars only to head back the way we came. Lock in the course to the Earth and proceed. At best speed what’s our ETA?” he asked the Nav officer.
The older man’s eyes flicked down to the tablet before replying “Four weeks’ captain. Barring any debris or similar obstacle we plan to insert into a high orbit within four weeks”. The captain nodded, jotted a few notes on his tablet and turned to the man on his right. “Speaking of debris, does the Obs team have anything to add regarding that?”
The Observation team leader cleared his throat as tapped commands onto his tablet. “After making the parallax checks for Nav we turned the telescopes to Earth.” He tapped a button on his tablet and two very similar blurred images appeared on the projector. “This one,” he said, circling it with a laser pointer, “is one of the last images taken by an Exodus ship before transit. 288 years ago.” It showed a fuzzy blob. “This one is one we took 45 minutes ago using a very similar telescope.” This fuzzy blob was slightly darker and surrounded by a variety of grey-black blips. "These," he pointed at the little black blips, "are debris from either space stations or one of the fleets. We won’t know until we get closer. This will however complicate our approach.”
He tapped another button and the images changed, this time the bead was grey and blurrier. “Again a pre-Exodus picture, this brighter spot was the sight of the lunar cities and the Sol beacon,” he indicated the second image, “taken thirty minutes ago, again by a similar telescope. You’ll notice that the bright patch is missing. We have two theories in this regard. The first: we’re looking in the wrong spot. It sounds ridiculous but at the distances we're talking about it's incredibly easy. The second is that we’re looking in the right spot but what we’re after is no longer there.” He looked grim. “Unfortunately the second theory is more likely than the first. At some point during the war, the entire moon arcology was annihilated.”
The room was quiet as he finished his report. The captain thanked him and checked his new tablet.
“Thanks Shez, I think we all knew what to expect coming back here but that drives the point home.” He looked around the room. “My ancestors were Selenites, I would have liked to see it, see if it matches the stories but I suppose now we’ll never know.”
He was quiet for a moment before raising his head and clapping his hands together.
“Right! Enough moping around! We’ve travelled too far to just pine away for ancient history. Speaking of which, I want everyone to go through the language modules again.” A loud chorus of groans filled the room. Captain Haines grimaced “I know it’s not exactly my idea of fun either but it needs doing. It’s been three hundred years people, what we speak now is vastly different to the old tongues. It’ll be the same down there. If we can speak to them in Old English or Old French or even Mandarin, then perhaps we can find some common ground.”
“You really think there’s people down there sir?” asked Chief Somore.
The captain shrugged and said “I really hope so, Jenn. It’d make this whole trip worth the risk.”
___________________________________________________________________________
After that the reports continued and plans were made.
The flash in the heavens did not go unnoticed.
The route was plotted and a squadron of 8 drones launched along it to scan for any unforeseen obstacles, as well as to provide a clearer image of Earth.
Observers reported in.
In the first week as the Donatello moved away from the transit station it began to receive all manner of radio, microwave and other more esoteric bandwidths, while mostly noise. Some of these signals clearly had information coded into them. Information that they could not access.
Information was gathered and intentions locked into place.
In the second week they received the first clearer image of Earth in nearly 300 years. It was still a green, blue and brown ball adrift in space but the multitude of lights they were hoping to see was much reduced.
Alliances were formed, broken and re-forged.
In the third week the drones sent images of several massive space stations orbiting Earth, each was different from its neighbour. Some were minimalistic and traditional; others followed strange sometimes nonsensical designs.
Plans were made, discarded and redesigned.
On the fourth week the ship reached its destination.
Action was taken.
There was a soft ping.
“Sir we’ve just lost telemetry from drone 4”. The Obs officer looked up from his console and glanced over at his subordinate. “It’s probably just an issue with its transmitter,” he said, “try re-establishing the link via the other drones”.
She shook her head. “I’ve already tried that sir, all the variations. I’m getting no response. Tasking 3 and 5 to its last known position and requesting visuals from 1.” She tapped out the commands and waited for the drones several thousand kilometres away to act them out. A single console pinged, soon followed by a cacophony of alerts bouncing across the control room.
The drone techs eyes widened.
“Sir we just lost 3 and 5… sir! You need to see this!”
The Obs officer hunkered down next to her as she replayed the clip from drone 1. Drone 1 was further away from the rest of the small squadron and was being used as a relay from the ship to the others. This time however it was a key witness in the fate of drones 3 and 5. The two crew members watched on the screen as the drones, separated by 200 kilometres, drifted near drone 4s last known position. There was nothing, just some spinning slivers of metal floating in the void. As the two closed in on the debris, drone 3 suddenly shattered into thousands of fragments. Drone 5 slid forward oblivious for a few seconds before meeting the same fate.
The Obs officer's face went pale; he turned to the drone controller and gave a rapid series of instructions.
“Pull all the remaining drones back and set them for full spectrum scanning. Find out where the impactor came from and send the coordinates and that clip to my tablet.”
“Sir!” cried one of the communication technicians from across the room. “I’m picking up a signal from Earth. I think it’s from one of the stations!”
“Play it!” the officer shouted back.
The comms man pressed a key and the room filled with an eerie melange of voices, some whispering, some roaring, all incomprehensible. Each voice was a small part of a whole which spoke as if from some discordant choir.
“WhO? LEaVe. gO” it said in Old English. It repeated, cycling through fourteen different languages before looping back to Old English.
Less than a minute later the captain watched the clip of the drones’ destruction. Coupled with the voices from the still unknown sender, it served to unsettle him.
He turned to the assembled crew members,
“Isolate the signal and reply, Lieutenant Keens, record the following: This is the United Planets Vessel Donatello, we came here via the transit gate looking for the home world. We are explorers with peaceful intentions. I repeat we come in peace.” He nodded to the technician who pressed the button and sent the message. What followed was an agony of waiting until a soft chime rang out, startling the assembled crew.
The drone tech spoke up,
“The program’s finished running sir, based on the distance and line of sight the most likely launch point was this space station.” The image showed a knot of fused metalwork dusted with all manner of strange protrusions. “Going off the visuals Sir we estimate it to be between 2 to 3 kilometres across at the horizontal. It’s one of the larger stations currently visible to us”. As she spoke another chime sounded.
“We have a reply,” said Lt Keens. At a nod from the captain she played the message. As before it was a composite voice made up of many others. This time however there was another sound in the background, a long, low groan akin to metal bending under the weight of an ocean. Or the call of some distant leviathan.
“wE KnoW wHo YoU ARE. ThoSe who FLed. eXODus. THERE can be NO peace.”
As the last words rang out, the ship groaned and rumbled. Those unfortunate enough not to be belted in, were flung across the deck.
The first missile had hit the hull.
“WeLComE HoME”