HEADWIND
7 March 2209
IHF7 Whisper | departing Mars
Whisper bolted into the uncharted black. This would be the starship’s farthest mission, sixteen light-years to an exoplanet orbiting Gliese 1002. It took conviction and unwavering sacrifice to commit for the voyage. Those aboard were ready for anything.
The starship measured 150 meters from nose to stern with a hundred-meter wingspan, powered by two cylindrical turbines on the wingtips. Her hull was dull gray, with white and navy pinstripes stenciling her wings, engines, and fuselage. Scientific advances in hydrogen fusion propulsion were integrated with refined quantum engineering. Mass calibration protected soft tissue and hardware, reducing lethal accelerative properties to three G forces as the frigate approached cruising speed.
More than a dozen crew members were buckled into gel-padded seats on the bridge. Hubs for fire control, navigation, communication, and life support surrounded two commanding chairs. Three meters up from the command deck, the walls concaved over the pilot seats. A windshield of reinforced glass presented the stars ahead.
Captain Sasha Gagarina trained her blue eyes forward, feeling her body sink into the cushions. Seniority and guardianship over so many lives made her pale skin prickle and heart jitter. Ninety trillion miles lay uncharted, fraught with mystery, rife with perils, and lacking any safe harbor. She’d changed into dark camo fatigues prior to launch, disguising nerves that would have soaked through the standard whites. The wardrobe change couldn’t keep the bead of sweat sliding down from her styled blonde hair.
Since a fiery baptism into orbital ops at the turn of the century, Sasha had set herself apart as a soldier willing to risk the impossible. Committed service over the years had earned her captain’s rank. With it came the actualization of her lifelong dream, at a sobering cost. She’d earned command of a starship just as the tides of conflict settled and figureheads of outward expansion capitalized on the defeat of an ecoterrorist group. While she’d never wished to leave her widowed mother, Earth’s orbit, or the solar system for generations, she continued to prioritize humanity over her desires.
“Status?” Sasha asked.
“Fifty percent,” Lieutenant Chris Weaver said.
Chris wanted to fly, following in his pioneering ancestor’s footsteps, no matter the obstacle. Exposure to the Martian atmosphere imparted him with an incurable respiratory syndrome that he’d managed to keep classified since he was a teenager. Then on the last day of orbital training, at terminal velocity, a freak accident occurred. He’d saved an unconscious classmate, but barely had enough time to deploy his own chute. The fall paralyzed him, x-rays exposed his brick-lung, and he awoke to a letter of disability discharge next to two shiny medals.
Some still argued to this day that he didn’t belong on this ship. Heroism aside, his disability and condition were difficult factors to ignore. Dead weight if the mobility exoskeleton draping from his hips to his boots failed; pilot incapacitated if his airway seized. It was only by the grace of the starship’s AI that this seat had been given to him. Her adamance made him wonder if she truly trusted him as a pilot or simply refused to leave the solar system without her companion.
Whisper’s shimmering hologram stood between the commanding officers. She was more than the ship; she was the personality that gave her crew a sense of security. The artificial intelligence program formed a gorgeous face and full volume platinum hair above a flawless figure with perfect posture. Her avatar was translucent, gray and silver skin, a sleeveless gold dress cascading down past her toes. Both her hair and dress waved in a virtual breeze, the only visible consequence of accelerating to NLT. While her designer had grown too old to explore the uncharted darkness, Whisper had been endowed with the privilege along with a monumental mission: find humanity’s new home.
For some aboard, the jump to transit speed was terrifying. For the two in the pilot seats, it was over before it started. The vibrations subsided as the frigate reached its most efficient velocity. Chris beamed at the spectacle through the reinforced glass. It would take a little less than an hour to surpass Jupiter’s orbital reach and only four to travel beyond Neptune.
“Opening gravity ports,” he said, tapping some buttons integrated into his armrest.
Several slots on the portside turbine slid open, dispersing lateral thrust. Another set opened under the starboard turbine, driving the frigate into a wide spiral. The centrifugal spin simulated gravity near one G. As photons distorted at high speed, a filter rose over the glass pane to reduce seasickness.
“Steady at seventy percent,” Chris said, voice bubbling.
Sasha cleared her throat and tapped the intercom. “All hands, this is the captain. We are at transit speed with a distant lighthouse in sight. No matter what we face, I expect you all to rise to the challenge. We’re our only lifeline out here. We can’t afford any mistakes. Whisper, run through the mission.”
“Our voyage will elapse roughly thirty-three years to Gliese 1002,” Whisper said over the ship’s speakers. “Scheduled cryostasis will initiate this week and continue until I meet a challenge that I cannot resolve alone. Nobody knows what we may find out there. But I have confidence in everyone aboard.”
The brief stirred conviction and concern among the crew. Too many unknowns lay ahead to spare any complacency. Despite completing a lengthy isolation test over Io, some sailors couldn’t shake their tension.
Master Chief Tom Latham bit his teeth while listening in. Cuts on his left eyebrow and nose had scarred over since those hectic days on the frontline. His hair had grown out to a mullet over Io, and he hadn’t lost a pound of bulk muscle since his rugby days. He’d previously served and withdrawn due to trauma sustained in war, but the doomsday predictions had compelled him back into the sky. His skillset could shape their success. And after considering it long enough, Tom convinced himself that not going would ensure the apocalypse.
Tom battled his nerves as the irrational predicament filled his mind. Because of an AI program, a liability was steering the ship. A hand squeezed his wrist.
“What?” Tom asked the grinning officer at his side.
“You seem nervous,” Helena Rubio said.
“All that’s at stake with this crapshoot, it’s hard not to be.”
“It’s day one.”
“Out of twelve thousand.”
“Hey”—she nudged his side— “we’ll sleep through most of that.”
Tom clasped his fidgeting hands together and leaned forward. “You call that the bright side? Stuck in cryo while the ship is traveling at two hundred thousand kilos a second?”
“You’re oddly pessimistic today.”
“Stress brings out my negative side.”
“What are you worried about?”
“Right now, it’s a coinflip between the washout and the AI who put him on this boat.”
Sasha rose from her seat and walked his way. “Do we still have a problem, Chief?” she asked, her volume low.
Tom sat up straight, letting her fathom his sincerity. “I’ll try to be professional. But I’m not changing my mind.”
“I’m not asking you to change your mind. Just keep it open.”
“All due respect Cap, I’m not going to keep my skull screwed so loose that any common sense falls out.” He jumped out of his seat and promptly walked off the bridge.
Sasha waited until the fading thumps and rushing air of a pressure seal separated her from a doubtful subordinate. While Chris had gone through the isolation test without a respiratory episode occurring, his condition would always pose a liability. Whisper demanded him for the pilot’s role, leaving some aboard the ship wondering if their fate had already been sealed by the same AI designed to ensure their safety. Sasha strode up the bridge, lost in thought, until she stood alongside the pilot in question.
Chris kept his eyes forward, even when her presence became obvious. No matter his internal glee from having the stars in his reach, he couldn’t disregard the burden on his shoulders. Io was only a test. Everyone counted on him to be perfect.
“You’ve got a lot to prove, Lieutenant,” Sasha said.
Chris nodded. “I won’t let you down, ma’am.”
*
Lieutenant Raya Nazim took a calming breath after the announcement concluded. Her true name was a mystery, kept hidden for her own safety. Her past was full of impossible choices and painful goodbyes. She had ventured to Mars afterwards in search of purpose and fell for Chris after he fell from the sky. He would have thrown away his pilot seat for a simple life with her. Instead, she’d volunteered to let him live his dream. Today she was questioning that decision.
Raya gazed out the nearby window from her launch cushion in the medical bay. Though her hazel eyes could only see the stars, her mind lingered on the home she’d left behind. She had buried both parents before she turned seventeen. Her guardian Nicole taught her to embrace the present’s finite gifts and her mentor Tau instilled the importance of moving forward. Though she vowed to make them all proud, a sliver of her soul couldn’t identify what, exactly, she was leaving behind. A gust pushed an obnoxious strand of dark hair over her freckled cheeks.
“Thanks, Dot,” she said with a laugh.
“Calm your breaths, little one,” the hovering droid replied.
Dot’s three gyrating ring turbines connected to a hub with two mechanical arms attached on the sides. Her brilliant white chassis was pinstriped with navy blue, and a neon turquoise LED lens encircled her main hub. She had met Raya years ago at a critical moment in her childhood and ever since had made a home at her side.
“I’ve had plenty of practice,” Raya said.
“Not in a journey of this measure.”
“I’m not leaving anything behind.”
“Eyes on the future, little one,” Dot said.
Raya concentrated on the other two sailors in the infirmary. A new volunteer had introduced herself shortly before takeoff, and an ambiguous secret seemed to hang in the air.
Maceo Ndiaye, seated a meter away from her, crossed his arms and gritted his teeth. The Somali-born orphan hid the cybernetic tissue and reinforced alloys beneath his skin from all but a few. The necessary medical experts had been briefed if an emergency occurred. Alison Maguire was a sudden, new addition to the crew, but had learned about his robotic augmentation in a much different way.
Alison rolled her evergreen eyes, hoping to defuse his apprehension. “You don’t need to put up a wall,” she said.
“The Alliance sent you to keep tabs on me,” Maceo replied while pointing a nervous finger.
“Why would I do that? Every minute, we go millions of miles further from any Alliance authorities. What would I have to tell them, and why would it matter now?”
“Five ships, but you jumped on this one?”
“Whisper needed another medic. And I thought my reception would be a little warmer with familiar faces.”
“We’ve known each other for two minutes—”
She cackled over his claim. “That was more like ten minutes.”
“I’m not here to make friends.”
“You picked a small place to not make any friends.”
“I found the ones I need,” Maceo said, unclipping his harness and rushing away. “I don’t have room for more.”
“If you change your mind, I won’t be far.”
The airlock shut behind Maceo. He stepped through the inner vestibule and into the lengthy hallway. After a few strides sternward, he entered the starboard-side research laboratory.
Grace Palmer, the ship’s civilian astrophysicist, tediously wrote on a whiteboard and scratched her raven head in contemplation. “Welcome in,” she said.
“You’ve redecorated,” Maceo replied.
“I wanted to have everything ready before we left. Family got in the way. I gave my kids five years of warning, but they still weren’t ready to say goodbye.”
Maceo paused, reflecting. He hadn’t left anything behind but headstones, but he still understood the pain of departure and never envied anyone fortunate enough to experience it. Before he could muster a reply, his eyes read and recognized formulas of gravity, acceleration, relativity, and more on the whiteboard. The elaborate string of numbers and letters trailed off without a solution.
“I’ve seen this formula,” he said.
“It’s always plagued us. Two thirds of the cosmic medium is an unaccounted force that ensures things keep flowing. I’ve been trying to figure this out for twenty years, and I’ve barely gotten anywhere.”
Dark energy remained a mystery to even the most intelligent minds today. It conflicted with every tenet of humanity’s understanding. Maceo knew as well as her that the solution would have to come to the right generation in time. Trial and error inevitably led to success.
He grabbed a marker from its holster and began scribbling numbers. Without any hesitation, he dotted a decimal and sequenced down to the millionth. Grace’s arm had fallen along with her baffled jaw by the time he’d added five sets. She opened a calculator on her tablet to double check what he’d written. Every equation she typed in matched his work.
“You can calculate square roots in your head?” she asked.
“I’m good with numbers.”
“That’s incredible.”
“It has its uses,” he said with a nonchalant shrug.
