129: PREPARE

“This had better be the colony or I’m eating my own liver,” Tinera says as everyone tries to crowd around the terminal in the Habitation Ring.

“Don’t do that,” the Friend says. “Transplants are risky.”

“You did Celi’s with no problems. One hundred per cent success rate. I feel perfectly safe.”

Lina nods. “That sounds like something patients would say.”

Tal speaks up from the keyboard. “So, do you want me to actually play the – ?”

“Yes!” Captains Kae Jin and Klees bark in unison.

A familiar voice comes through the speakers. “Crew of the Courageous. This is communications officer Hive Cattail. I’ve been nominated as our point of communication. Apparently. Apologies for the delay, we’ve been having some minor difficulties with our equipment that are now resolved.”

“Ooh, Cattail got a promotion,” Tinera whispers; Xanthe shushes her.

“Hylara welcomes you to the planet, and we’re excited to have you join the colony. Following this message is our location data. Please send through a thorough tally of the equipment and surviving colonists you have so that we can begin planning integration. Captain Klees, Captain Kae Jin, crew; congratulations on your successful flight. Your courage and sacrifice in taking this journey is an inspiration to us all, and we can’t wait to welcome you home. Cattail out.”

“Well,” Denish says after several seconds of silence. “That is more along the lines of an expected message.”

“Committee workshopped Official Message,” I agree. “Much more comforting.”

“Was that weird, or am I just being paranoid?” Xantha asks. “Equipment difficulties causing a big delay? Then this port supervisor is suddenly the main communication guy? Is that weird?”

Earl shrugs. “These people clearly are not in communication with anybody in space. It’s entirely possible that their capability to receive and transmit our signals is poorly maintained; it probably hasn’t been maintained since they gave us up for dead. They have a sudden need for the equipment and for a communications officer, so they appoint one.”

“Interesting timing on the equipment failure though, and that’s a long time to repair it.”

“We do not know what their system is like, what materials they have available, or how complex the repair process is. If they live in an irradiated wasteland full of raging dust storms, minor disrepair could be a very big issue. The failure happening immediately after contact is a little strange, but not enough to base a whole conspiracy on, Earl thinks.”

“I do!” Tinera says. “Or… don’t. I mean, I do think it’s enough. I’m open to being incredibly suspicious of these bastards.”

“You’re suspicious of everyone,” Captain Klees points out.

Captain Kae Jin coughs pointedly, which turns into a hacking cough while Earl checks her pulse monitor, concerned. After ten seconds or so she sits back and closes her eyes. “The why of it doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’re going to Hylara either way. Crew, we need to get… Klees, can you…?”

“I’m on it,” Captain Klees says. He gives Earl a tiny nod, and Earl wheels Captain Kae Jin back toward the medbay. Captain Klees starts parcelling out data gathering missions among crew members to put together a response. “No rush,” he says. “They kept us waiting.”

Fortunately, the crew don’t pull the same trick that the colony apparently did and make me be the spokesperson just because I was the first person to send a message. A day later, Captain Klees delivers a short audio message and sends our data through.

In return, we get a little more information about the colony; not nearly as much as my sociologist brain wants, just details likely to help with resource dropping in integration (details that make me, if anything, more curious). But it’s something.

The Hylaran colony is three hundred and ninety two people, and it is just under ninety years old, which translates to about sixty Earth years. It’s equatorial, with sufficient food for their population and significant power reserves, running off some type of atomic reactor I’ve never heard of. Their day is just over nineteen hours long. Two hundred and thirty eightof the colonists are under twenty Earthyears old, and it takes some prompting from ourdoctors demanding relevant health statisticsto learn that there are no elderly – the whole population was born on Hylara. Which means that none of the initial colonists are still alive. Fascinating.

Adjusting to their calendar is going to take some work. The ship’s day/night light cycle is immediately reduced by one hour per day, with the intent to keep reducing it over time and sync our day/night cycles with the colony. I resign myself to a lifetime of not having a day-long sleep schedule; there’s no way I can adjust to nineteen hours. The year, too, will take some adjustment – I’m used to a calendar of twelve thirty-day months, each month consisting of five six-day weeks, plus a thirteenth bridging month of five to six days between years. I can only hope that Hylara use something as sensible; they haven’t shared their calendar with us yet. They tend not to share anything there isn’t a practical reason for.

We’re getting so close, now. Our trajectory puts quite some distance between Hylara and the sun, now, and the planet is distinguishable with the naked eye. (Well, through the cameras. Nobody’s going out there in space suits to try to look at it. But it’s distinguishable with no magnification.) The captains authorise turning off the engines to try to get some good, high-detail telescope shots, and it’s… well, cloudy, mostly. Clouds, with patches of yellow beneath. I’m not sure what else I’d been expecting, given the humidity and temperature. We verify old readings and Sam reports, slightly embarrassed, that their air pressure reading had been off – Hylara’s air pressure is slightly lower than Earth’s, not higher, which is a relief for everyone. For building canvas pressure vessels on the surface, ‘slightly below Earth pressure’ is the best possible result.

Then, one day, we have a meeting in the Recreation Ring.

“The initial colonisation plans were to send one captain planetside with a crew and leave the other on the Courageous to coordinate supply drops and colony construction,” Captain Kae Jin says. “The existence of the colony doesn’t change that, especially given how little we know about conditions down there. We’ve decided to send a captain and a small liaisonteam down there to arrange things from the planetside and avoid any miscommunication. And,” she gestures to her wheelchair and oxygen tanks, “it’s fairly clear which captain is best to make a descent.”

Captain Klees nods. “I’ll be taking a team from my crew exclusively,” he says. “The rest of you are clearly extremely competent, properly trained, and I have to assume you’d be good in a crisis, but given the nature of the situation I think it’s best to have a team of people who have a long history of working together in crises.”

“And for my part,” Captain Kae Jin says, “I’m far too selfish to send any of my crew down. Too many of us have died recently. I refuse to let any of you out of my sight ever again.” Her crew all hide smiles at this.

“Who’s going?” Tinera asks.

“That’s what this meeting is for,” Captain Kae Jin says. “I’d like to keep Denish, if he’s amenable, and Sam. They have more experience maintaining and piloting the ship in its current state than my people do, and the safety of the ship is the highest priority until all important supplies are down.”

“And I insist that at least one of my doctors stays up here, too,” Captain Klees adds. “It’s going to be too much work for Earl, especially once you start reviving colonists. Like you say, the ship is critical; you’ll need sufficient medical help. I’d like to take the other doctor with me; we have no idea what the colony’s medical systems are like and a professional eye will help us prioritise supply drops.” He looks to the doctors. “Preferences?”

Lina and the Friend exchange a look.

“Lina is more learned when it comes to revival complications,” the Friend says, “and her experiments are up here. She should stay. This Friend has worked with refugee evacuations and suchlike before and knows how to prioritise medicine supplies and assess efficiency in field hospitals.”

“The Friend comes,” Captain Klees says. “I’d like Aspen, too; their sociology expertise could come in handy. Captain Kae Jin, do you need anyone else of mine?”

“Do we need Tal?” Captain Kae Jin asks Asteria.

Asteria shrugs. “Possibly? I mean, not right now; I think I have a handle on things. But if some other unforeseen problem rears its head, I don’t have the experience with these broken systems that Tal does.”

“That’s immaterial,” Tal shrugs. “We have radio contact. If anything happens you need backup on, you can just send me the data while I’m down with the aliens.”

Lina shakes her head. “Tal, they’re humans, not – ”

“They were born out here, weren’t they? Not on Earth, They’re aliens.”

“Me and Captain Kae Jin were born on the moon,” Tinera points out. “Are we aliens?”

“An Earth satellite is practically Earth.”

“I was born on Mars,” Asteria points out.

“The initiallanding party,” Captain Klees cuts in before this can get out of hand, “is myself, the Friend, Tal, Aspen, and Tinera. Everyone else will stay aboard for now. Any objections?”

Tinera reaches for Denish’s hand. They give each other a squeeze, but don’t object. The captains both nod briskly.

“Okay,” Captain Klees says. “We’ve got some preparation to do.”

And we do. We select a descent pod. We learn the procedures. We run drill after drill and go through exactly what to expect and what to do in an emergency. We pull into orbit around Hylara with surprisingly little incident, and Xanthe elects to go through the electrostatic shield and see if killing the synnerve will solve their adrenalin problem, which also, to everyone’s genuine shock, goes without incident. Will killing the synnerve work? We won’t find out until long after our away team is on the ground.

The main problem with the drop is the cloud cover. The pods are designed for a parachute drop; we’ll be coasting down via landing parachute with very little propulsion, which is only now starting to sound utterly terrifying, why did I get on this ship, why did I agree to be part of the landing mission, why did anyone thing the Javelin Program was a good idea. I comfort myself with the knowledge that everyone aboard is going to have to go down eventually; at least we’re getting the drop out of the way early. Besides, there are small engines for emergency steering and to soften the final descent. So it’ll be fine.

The cloud cover obscures our view of the ground and ability to predict landing conditions, which is an issue if we want to land as close as possible to the colony without actually endangering the colony. Fortunately, the colony have their own weather monitoring equipment, and between the two of us we can probably predict the drop with reasonable accuracy. Probably.

Dropping from space is not a fast process, even in a thin atmosphere. Goods can drop faster than people, and we don’t have an ocean to land in, meaning we’ll be playing it safe; the descent will take just over three hours. Three hours in which our main brake will be sheets of canvas dragging air, ready to drag our vessel back and forth on whatever wind currents happen to be about. The drop pods have propulsion systems for attitude adjustment and emergency braking, but not particularly large or complicated ones. It’s entirely possible that we could find ourselves off course.

The colony, to our surprise, insist that the planetary air is thin but safe to breathe, and that if we’re stranded far from the base and our atmospheric systems are compromised, that’s not a big deal so long as we’re within retrieval distance. Personally, I don’t think their definition of ‘safe’ matches up with ours. There is simply no possible way that a planet full of alien life is safe. It’s best to land with intact spaceships in an intact pressure vessel, able to walk or be taken to a nice isolated base in another intact pressure vessel.

And soon, very soon, we’re going to have to do it.