IF WE LIVE

The voyage of the Nieuw Breda (Lingo: 9B).

The 9B was a transporter of the VIC (Vereenigde Interstellair Compagne) out of Concourse:Vier (C:V) engaged in the VIC’s recolonization enterprise. VIC had recognized that a number of marginal colonies settled during late First Expansion might be made prosperous with the adoption of modern, Second Expansion technologies. One of these was New Kashmir (Lingo: NK, Eyeball), a tidally locked planet of the orange star Agni. NK had been a colonization project of the Pure Veda sect during the chaotic last years of First Expansion.

The mother ship Devi II, intended to settle thousands on the colony, was lost during its voyage. The colony struggled, but did survive – the only one of the eyeball worlds to do so. This presented an opportunity for the VIC. The eyeballs all closely orbited cool stars, which had little of the bluer light frequencies necessary to most terrestrial food crops. The plan for such worlds had been to build solar farms on the sunside of these worlds, then grow crops in artificially lighted fields with the power produced. At first, this worked. Then the PV cells reached the end of their productive lifespans. The AI factories which produced the PV’s failed. Support from Earth (DQ) was lost. Climate change, and the subsequent migrations and wars, had collapsed civilization on DQ. The Contraction began, with abandonment and die off of marginal colonies.

The 9B made orbit at DQ. As DQ had all the genetic feed stocks, it was still the center of advanced bioengineering. There the 9B took on an exo-agronomy team and seeds developed by PennAgroGen (PAG) via shuttle craft. The seeds were mostly of grain crops which had the DNA of bacterial chlorophylls added to their eucaryocytic genome, to enable them to prosper in cool sunlight.

 The 9B began accelerating at 1.3G sunward, to enter a solar slingshot trajectory. At periapsis she did a brief 2.5G Oberth burn. After leaving the solar slingshot, she settled into her cruising acceleration of 0.65G. The redshifted flare of her matter-antimater (MAM) drive was seen as she crossed the orbit of Mars, already traveling at 25 mC, and exactly on trajectory.

That was the last anyone in the Reach saw of her.

Aboard the 9B: Were officers Captain Carey Sulvepeda, First Officer Georgie Mbutu, Second Officer Thea Mele, Chief Engineer James Plott, and Second Engineer Ema Akiyama.  The PennAgroGen exo-agronomy team included Drs. Peter and Helen Sandow, their PhD student David Richard, and support staff. Except for Richard, they entered Induced Torpor for the months’ long voyage, to save space and the mass of their life support supplies. Richard’s role was that of Viability Tech, responsible for the survival of the (very expensively modified) seeds during transit, and the care of those in torpor. Also on board was VIC planetary astronomer Einar Peterson.  The 9B carried a suite of astronomy instruments. During the 9B’s infall, Peterson was to resurvey the Agni system, which had been rather poorly mapped during the First Expansion.

Ema Akiyama was life systems officer and worked closely with Richard. They began a relationship. She was a native of Concourse:San and a graduate of the Interstellar Academy. Most graduates of that prestigious school became Locators – officers on the interstellar exploration ships which found and explored new worlds. Ema was involved in a political party advocating for the Japanese minority on C:S. A crackdown by the Chinese majority led her to hurriedly sign a contract for a berth on the VIC transporter 9B.

She was recruited for the position by her former instructor James Plott. He was a native of Concourse:One and a military trained starship engineer. Plott had been involved in suppressing piracy in the Alastor system and then became an instructor at the academy.

On entry to the warp zone, 9B entered transit just as calculated, but her gray time was much shorter than expected. Gray time – the period during which the ship’s screens grayed out due to their passage through warp space – was inversely related to the potential energy difference between the entry and exit points.  She exited far too soon and found herself falling through the inner system of an unfamiliar star at relativistic speed. Even in the days of powerful MAM drives, interstellar vessels had to enter a system far out beyond most planets, to have time to decelerate to a velocity which would allow them to make orbit. Otherwise, their tremendous momentum would throw them right back into interstellar space.

The 9B began heavy braking acceleration immediately. Peterson did a survey and found a habitable zone planet (HZP) bearing water and oxygen and a Jovian planet in the outer system. The deck crew calculated a barely possible braking trajectory. It required a high g very close periapsis around the star followed by antegrade braking slingshot around the Jovian. The ship’s AI rejected this trajectory because of the dangerous periapsis. Sulvepeda overrode this, meaning that the deck officers were essentially flying the ship manually from that point onward.

At the very tight periapsis the 9B did an agonizing 5G burn. The ship was so close to the star that it risked grave damage. Through the burn, Sulvepeda rotated the ship on its long axis to spread the tremendous heat and radiation, but the 9B still suffered significant damage to its attitude thrusters, limiting its ability to maneuver. The 9B exited the reverse solar sling with a reduced but still great velocity and headed to the outer system Jovian to make an antegrade braking sling around it.

The 9B could never land, even if it could slow enough to do so, as it would burn up during entry to an atmosphere. It did carry a launch, the 9Ba, designed to carry very limited cargo and a few passengers down to colony worlds which had not yet developed orbital supply capacity. The 9Ba didn’t have enough acceleration couches for the crew and the PAG team. Plott and Ema cut couches from the 9B and welded them to every every possible spot in the 9Ba. While they prepared the 9Ba, Richard aroused the PAG team from Torpor. This was a process usually spread over weeks, and had a significant risk of seizures, but Richard had to do it in days – and to explain to the team the terrible situation they faced. Richard had to use anti-seizure medication on several individuals, but the whole team survived.

After the braking sling around the Jovian, the deck officers recalculated their trajectory. It was quickly apparent that the 9B was still going too fast. She could not make orbit around the HZP without using braking acceleration too high for the crew and passengers to survive. During infall to the star, Peterson had been unable to see anything of the system on the other side of the star, but after rounding the Jovian he did detect several gas giants in the outer system. He hurriedly tried to calculate their masses and orbits.

Sulvepeda had to make a decision. He could bend his trajectory around the HZP and head to the outer system to hope to do a braking slingshot around one of the gas giants to get back to the inner system. Georgie Mbutu proposed they ram the 9B into the HZP and try to release the 9Ba at just the right time to keep it from skipping right back out of the atmosphere. If he chose the latter course, Sulvepeda had to do it right away: there was no time to allow Peterson to observe and calculate the outer planet masses and orbits. Captain Sulvepeda chose the second alternative.  They could not be sure they could even reach one of the gas giants, much less do a sling around it. Rather than rely on hope, he chose to sacrifice his ship to save the crew and passengers.

Sulvepeda aimed to hit the HZP dead center. He dared not hit the atmosphere at an angle, lest the 9B bounce off and be flung back into space in an uncontrolled trajectory. He reduced the MAM deceleration to 1G to allow boarding of the 9Ba, then shut down the MAM and ignited the 9B’s methoxy rocket engine. The MAM could not be used in a planetary atmosphere or in close orbital maneuvers: the deadly gamma radiation of its drive flare would kill anything it touched.

Sulvepeda hurriedly entered the 9Ba and joined Thea Mele on the tiny control deck. Just as the 9B’s methoxy tanks ran dry, he caused the 9Ba to be ejected from the ship: the ejection added a little momentum to the 9B and caused the 9Ba to lose some. He and Thea then fired the 9Ba’s own methoxy engine. Beneath them the 9B was in free fall but still had great velocity. As the atmosphere thickened around it, it began to burn and break up, producing a spectacular display over what they would later know as the Eastern Ocean.

On the 9Ba they couldn’t see their ship’s fiery death. The 9Ba was tail down, decelerating at maximum thrust. The 9Ba had ablation tiles, and all Sulvepeda and Mele could see was the burning shroud those tiles produced around the launch. The methoxy tanks burned out. The 9Ba was in free fall. Mele was the better pilot, so she took the stick. While the main drive was exhausted, the 9Ba had thrusters to control attitude. Mele used them to turn the launch belly down. The broad surface heated white hot, ablating as the launch gradually slowed, her energy being burned up. Mele was flying the launch as a giant glider, like the shuttles from the very beginning of the space age. She was aiming for a broad plain Peterson had observed from space. The 9Ba burned its way across the Stablen skies, coming down on the western Hastab. The 9Ba struck a slight rise in the ground and was thrown back into the air in an uncontrolled roll. She slammed back down on her side.

Richard and Georgie Mbutu had two couches crammed into what had been an electronics bay. During the very rough landing, the couches partially broke from their welds to the deck, ramming the heads of both men against the bulkhead. Mbutu suffered a skull fracture and subsequently died. Richard was knocked unconscious.

The rest of the story is told in IF WE LIVE.

The voyage of the Devi II

The Devi II(D2) was a mother ship chartered by the Pure Veda movement to establish a colony on the eyeball world they called New Kashmir. The Devi I had already founded a foothold colony staffed by exoplaneteers. The D2 carried thousands of human blastocysts to establish the population, artificial wombs to gestate and birth the blastocysts, technicians to operate the wombs, and several hundred Anabaptist farmers. It was thought that the colonists would have to farm without technology for many years, and the Anabaptists were skilled in these techniques. The blastocysts of horses, cattle and other farm animals were included among the ship’s living cargo.

The D2’s trajectory is no longer known, but it must have involved several braking slings of outer system planets to slow enough to land. The D2 was a water lander, and Captain V.K. Patel chose the estuary of the Wawee River.  They made a successful landing and found themselves in what seemed an ideal location. The wide Lastab lay to the west. Rolling hills and woodlands lay to the east.

The fusion drive was converted to power generation, and the techs began to make babies. For the next twenty years the whole community was engaged in raising them.

During that time, Patel called for a jubilee. They recognized that their new world, that they named Uma, was far richer than NK. They rejoiced in the divine providence that had given them such a gift. They did not see that Uma’s fecund richness would transform them into something unrecognizable.

After establishing farms in the east Lastab, the farmers made a brief attempt to plant wheat on the west bank of the Wawee River. The dense mat of whipgrass roots defeated every attempt to plow. The farmers thought the fibrous whipgrass was inedible by terrestrial animals, but their horses quickly discovered that they could nibble off the highly nutritious fruiting tips of the whipgrass. Some escaped into vastness of the Stablen. Herds of feral horses arose, outcompeting the native springer, and fighting off their predators, the slinkers.

On the east bank the kids, now grown to teenagers, looked up from the tedium of their chores on the farms, and the bewildering chants Patel insisted they learn. They saw an ocean of grass seething with horses. The story of the wild girl is a legendary retelling of the creation of the west Lastablener people.

As their labor force of kids slipped away, the farmers struggled. Although the short grass of the east Lastab was easier to plow than whipgrass, it still took a great deal of labor to produce a crop.

The techs finished birthing the last of the kids. The fusion reactor ran out of fuel and shut down. The D2 lost power. One spring, the rush of snow melt in the river combined with a violent storm to break it from its moorings. It disappeared into the eastern ocean.

Patel did not react well to these changes. He and his crew seized the crops of the farms and tried to redistribute them as they desired. Patel tried to get the techs to work on projects in the compound later called Sunrise House.

The farmers had heard of a great valley to the north, with a cool climate and deep, rich soils ideal for their grain crops. Across the Lastab, the kids told the techs, was a land on the western ocean, free of the fierce winters of Wawee. The techs began to drift away to the land they called New California, as the kids had already drifted away to the grasslands, and the farmers to the Vale.