The Valiant, Earth orbit
8 years 2 months 2 days after Eridani landing
Wandering time [283 years]
Ranlin had been on the bridge for nearly a day straight, translating and sorting through all of the different signals being transmitted by the satellites orbiting Earth. It was difficult work, considering all of the different encoding schemes and languages that Humanity had used. It was also potentially critical work – the Valiant had already been badly damaged by one defense satellite, so she had spent the entire day trying to determine if they were in immediate danger of being fired on again.
She had managed to translate and identify about half of the automated audio communications they had picked up so far, and the computer was busy analyzing them. The last thing she had done before retiring for the day was set the computer to tag any new transmissions. It would be at least another day until the engines were repaired; she could finish the analyses tomorrow after she got some sleep.
Stepping into her quarters, Ranlin shrugged off her stiff clothes and laid down on her bunk, but her eyes did not stay closed for long. As much as she wanted to rest, her mind wouldn’t seem to allow it. Still far too excited – after all, she was in orbit of Earth! Where the Lovers had come from!
Pulling out her data tablet, Ranlin opened the next in a long line of short videos that had been included in the data logs of the Lovers’ shuttle. Most were made by the Vakurian woman, and most were made in the home the two had shared on Earth, three hundred years ago.
The focus of this particular video was the small creature that seemed to cohabitate with them. It was a dark, four legged thing with fur and a tail, only about knee height. Curiously, it had ears which looked remarkably Vakurian, if somewhat shorted.
The video showed the Human male chasing the creature down, which the small creature plainly did not seem to be enjoying. Which was strange, considering how in so many of the other videos it had been contentedly purring in the lap of either lover as they stroked its fur.
“This is your pet! Why do I have to give it a bath?!” asked the Human as he finally cornered and grabbed the small creature, which began to let out petulant yowls.
“Because I’m recording it! Besides, you help clean me every day, and I’m sure we’re related!” the ancient Vakurian said as she reached out and petted the small creature’s ears.
The Human rolled his eyes.
The chime to her door went off and startled Ranlin out of her reverie, but she ignored it, continuing to watch the video instead. She was off duty; if it was important, her communicator would chime.
“Ranlin, open the door!” came a muffled cry. It was Drienil.
“Go away, I’m sleeping!” growled Ranlin.
“I’ve found something I want you to see!”
“Go away!”
“It’s about the Humans!”
Ranlin rolled over on her bed and flopped to the floor in an undignified heap. Getting to her feet, she trudged to the door, opened it and glared at the woman outside.
“What?” she growled, ears down angrily.
Drienil pushed past her and stepped into the quarters.
“What?” repeated Ranlin, not at all amused.
“I think your Humans might still be here!” Drienil said as she shoved a tablet into Ranlin’s tired hands and sat down on the bed, ignoring the mess in the room.
Bleary eyed, Ranlin looked at the tablet for a moment. It was displaying the orbits of the satellites around Earth. The same ones she had been investigating and deciphering for the past few days.
“Drienil…” Ranlin trailed off.
“The satellites are still in perfect orbits. They’ve had station keeping!” said Drienil.
Ranlin looked over at the woman, irritated. “The Humans were smart enough to program their satellites to automatically keep station orbits, Drienil.”
The scientist nodded. “Sure, sure. But if they were in orbit of their home world, why aren’t they in perfect orbits to transmit to the planet, rather than to the moon?”
Ranlin blinked and looked at the trajectories again. Normally, a satellite in orbit of a planet, particularly one that would be used for communication or reconnaissance data, the period of the orbit would be uniform. All of the satellites around Earth had elliptical periods, which placed them in perfect sync with the planet’s moon instead.
Their greatest amount of time was spent on the side of the planet facing the moon. When they approached the planet, they would dip almost perilously close to the atmosphere, gaining velocity from the gravity well before they were flung back out around the planet to once again be in view of the moon.
“That is…strange,” Ranlin admitted.
“The satellites are also transmitting on a wide frequency, rather than focusing their transmission. Do you know when that is advantageous?” asked Drienil.
Ranlin shrugged.
The computer scientist rolled her eyes, “It’s when you don’t have background noise, and you don’t want anyone to know where the data is being sent! A planet that had billions of people on it would be far too loud for the transmissions from those satellites to be heard. But without the deluge of signals from the planet, you could pick up these signals from anywhere in the solar system! Someone had to have adjusted them after the Empire attacked!”
Ranlin’s eyes widened. “So that means,” Ranlin started, then paused.
Mare Tranquillitatis base, Moon
Allen cracked the seal on the ration pack and stared down at it for a moment.
It was the same thing he had eaten every Tuesday morning for the past eight years. Cheese omelet with peppers. Or something supposedly resembling it.
Wednesday was corned beef hash.
Thursday he skipped breakfast, just to break the cycle.
Friday was cereal and rehydrated milk.
Saturday was toast.
Sunday was stale waffles and no syrup.
Monday was just eggs.
The same inane thing for eight years. Sure, he could change the order, but those were his only options so he kept them spread out as much as possible.
To be honest, he didn’t even taste it anymore anyway. It was all freeze dried, and had been prepared on a planet that no longer had Humans on it. Picking up the steaming mass of calories, Allen shoved the entire thing into his mouth, enjoying the heat of the meal more than the taste as he swallowed it.
The facility he was stuck in had originally been built to house over 500, but it had been shut down after the war. The military had sent Pastore and his squad to act as grunts while Allen and the other specialists converted the base into a training facility. Allen had arrived shortly after the military, but his team never made it. When the alien attack had taken place, his entire team had still been on a transport bound for the Moon.
Which made him the only civilian on the base, stuck for eight years with a squad of grunts that had only been trusted with watching civilian contractors knock down walls and remodel.
He was going to go fucking insane. He knew he was. One day, he was just going to walk out the airlock. Not out of any want to kill himself, nothing like that; he would do it just to break the monotony.
One man, McCormack, had already killed himself years ago. He had been acting the same as everyone else. He had been just as bored, just as restless. After one meal, he simply reached down to his belt and grabbed his gun, pressed it to his chin, and pulled the trigger. No one had moved to stop him, and afterwards no one had known what to say. The last twenty humans alive stopped eating their meals together after that.
They had remained in contact with the other bunkers the first few years, but after the fall of the Mars Bunker, the rest had gone silent. Maybe it was a communications malfunction; more likely a complete failure of life support, anarchy or some other catastrophe.
What was left of humanity was slowly being driven mad.
The Moon base, though, had been designed to be the backup to Earth Command during the war, and had been stocked to survive being cut off from all supply lines with a crew of 500 for five years. With only twenty people, they had enough supplies to last a full quarter century.
Allen didn’t think he was going to make it that long. Not with Pastore in command.
Allen left the kitchen and walked through the empty corridors to the main command center, passing through the multiple layers of security and redundancy that were still kept active after all these years at Pastore’s insistence.
He sat down at the sensor console and looked up at the massive twenty foot screen that was currently showing the status of objects in Earth orbit. Most were red, indicating dead assets. Others were grey, debris from the ships of the 1st, still in orbit from where the aliens had destroyed the fleet.
The single point of interest was highlighted green.
The alien craft.
It was about the same size as the one that had attacked years before, but otherwise it was completely different. The power signature was far lower, and even just looking at it through the optics it was obvious that they were different. The ship that had attacked Earth, and all of the ships that had garrisoned Mars for four years until the bunker was finally destroyed, had been smooth, black, sinuous, and lethal. The ship in orbit now was old, a patchwork of different metals and modules cobbled together.
Allen had no basis besides the visual differences, but he was sure that the alien ship wasn’t from the same people who attacked them. Not that it made them friendly – scavengers would be just as deadly to them as an alien death ship at this point.
“Anything?” Allen asked as he sat down at the station.
Mack looked up from where he was sitting on the opposite side of the cavernous command center.
“Nope, they’re still hanging out in orbit. Those old missiles must have really done some damage.”
“Still nothing from Phobos?” asked Allen.
“Nope.”
“Damn it.”
Mack stood up, stretching slightly, and grabbed his cup. Taking a look around the empty control center, he asked Allen, “You good?”
“Yeah.”
Bouncing up over several of the consoles in the low gravity, Mack made a leisurely exit.
Looking down at his console, Allen started going over the data on the alien ship once more. A decade ago, he would have been amazed by what he was seeing. But he’d spent the last eight years studying alien ships as they destroyed Humanity. Every scrap of information that Humanity had on the ships had been sent to the moon, and he had tried to analyze it, hunting for some sort of weakness. But he hadn’t found any. The shields were simply too strong, and without knowing how they actually worked, Allen hadn’t even come close to figuring out how to bypass them.
He had studied everything they transmitted, looking for an edge, a single weakness or piece of information that humanity might use. It had been fruitless, though. The men in Pastore’s squad had helped him at first, all of them equally angry, all working together to find a way to get revenge. But they had long since retreated into almost complete isolation. The men had fought together in the war, and although not the most effective squad, they had still bonded. Allen was not a part of that group; he wasn’t even military. After the destruction of the Mars Bunker, the squad had all but given up. Allen had kept at it. He was an engineer at heart; the work was all he had left to keep him going.
The console in front of Allen started blinking. Looking up, he frowned. The instruments were detecting an oddly encoded transmission coming from the alien ship. Allen glanced at the raw data for a moment. The computer was already routing it through the normal filters to try and recognize it, not that it would do much good. Expecting nothing, Allen turned back to the analysis on the metallurgy of the ship’s hull when the computer beeped, alerting him to a formatting match.
“What the?” said Allen, surprised that a match was found. The data being transmitted was formatted in the style of a 2020’s Earth data packet message. Old, but it was still the basis for modern computer data stream formats. The content of the message was a video, using an equally old data format.
Curious, Allen hesitantly queued the data to be played with the ancient codecs.
It took the computer a moment to reinterpret and translate the data, but it spat out a result a moment later.
Allen blinked, not sure what he was looking at.
A human male was sitting in what was unmistakably an alien craft. Next to him sat an alien woman. Given only a moment to process this, Allen was again surprised when the woman spoke.
The language was lilting and pleasant, but somewhat aggressive.
The human spoke next, also in the alien language.
The alien female rolled her eyes and playfully smacked him on the chest. The man smiled at that, and put his hand around her shoulder.
The woman looked directly at the camera and her expression darkened growing more serious.
There was another short exchange, before the alien woman said something recognizable.
“Humanity.”
Allen blinked and tried to sort out what he had just seen.
Looking back down at the console, Allen saw that there was still more data streaming in from the alien ship. The computer was still trying to identify most of it. Allen quickly restricted the computer to early 21st century data patterns.
After a moment, multiple computer files and documents started to coalesce.
“It’s a trap. Simple as that,” said Pastore.
Allen looked at the computer monitor, and then at the base’s commanding officer. “It’s a fairly elaborate trap, then. From what I can tell, all of this data is authentic, and they’re still streaming it to us – not looping anything except the first video.”
Allen put that video up on the screen again, showing the Human and the alien together in the cockpit of some sort of small transport.
Mack and everyone else on the base looked up at it.
“They have to have some suspicion we’re here, anyway. The transmission isn’t general – it’s directed at the moon,” said Allen.
Pastore shook his head. “How would they know we’re here? This bunker was designed to be undetectable! No thermal output, and it’s got enough radiation shielding that no signals should even make it to the surface of the moon, let alone bleed away into space. There’s no way they could detect us.”
Allen shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe they don’t need an IR signature to detect us?”
Pastore frowned. “They haven’t fired on us yet, so they don’t know where we are. The signal is to try and flush us out.”
“They’re sending us home videos of a human and an alien from 200 years ago to try and flush us out?” asked Allen, incredulous.
“It’s all they had! I want all systems shut down, now. Everything shut down and dark except for sensors!” Pastore turned to Mack. “We can go, what, two days or so without life support?”
Mack nodded. “About three days, although it starts to get a little cold by then.”
“Right. Shut everything down, then.”
Nodding hesitantly, Mack turned to the power control console and killed the power to the majority of the lunar bunker’s systems. The lights in the control center died, and small emergency lights flashed on, illuminating everything with an eerie red glow.
“Pastore.” Allen started, standing up and facing the man.
Pastore stared resolutely back at him, not giving him the chance to start. “We’re not discussing this. It’s too dangerous to contact them! Even if they do want to be friendly, I think Humanity’s had more than enough interaction with aliens!”
He gestured at a small screen still displaying a live image of the Earth.
Allen grimaced and sat back down.
“Good. I want you to keep watch, though. As soon as they stop transmitting or they leave orbit, I want to be informed.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pastore nodded, and with a push off the floor, hopped out of the command center. Most everyone else followed him, retreating back into the tasks they set for themselves to consume their time in the cavernous complex.
Grumbling to himself, Allen turned back to the computer console and looked at the newest data stream that was filtering into the console.
Mack glanced over at him. “You alright?”
“I’m fine!” spat Allen.
Mack chuckled. “Yeah, you sound fine.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fine, fine. Be all moody,” said Mack.
Allen turned away from him and back to the computer console.
The Valiant, Earth Orbit
“No response?” asked Drienil.
Ranlin slowly shook her head. She could barely keep her eyes open at this point.
“No response.”
Drienil pursed her lips, her ears fluttering back and forth. “How well do you know the language?”
“What?” asked Ranlin, looking over at her.
“Could you say hello?” she asked. “All you’ve done so far is retransmit the stuff from the shuttle. If these Humans have been hiding since their world was destroyed, they’re not going to be very eager to come out. They might not come out at all! But I still think you should try to greet them in some way.” Pulling out her Comm, Drienil pointed it at Ranlin.
The woman blinked and for a brief moment close her eyes and tried to summon up her last dregs of strength.
“Alright.”
Drienil held the camera steady as Ranlin looked into the lens, suddenly not sure what to say.
For a half moment she simply stared at it, her ears moving wildly back and forth in indecision.
“Hello, peace! Please Peace!” she said, and then glanced over at her own Comm to see the translation program still running. Grabbing it, she quickly typed in the rest of her message and held it up to the camera for the Humans who were hopefully watching to read.
“We want peace with Humanity! Those who attacked you and took your world took ours as well!”
Drienil dropped her Comm, and Ranlin collapsed onto the computer terminal in front of her, exhausted.
“I’ll add this to the transmission.”
“Alright,” mumbled Ranlin, already asleep, dreaming. Not of what had been, not of what the two lovers shared. She dreamed instead of what could be, what the future had to be.
“Out with it, what did you see?” asked Mack, looking over at Allen. Allen was staring more avidly at the screen in front of him then he had in hours, which was saying something considering how intent upon it he had been.
“‘Hi’. They’re saying ‘hi’.”
Allen turned his monitor slightly so that Mack could see it.
Pushing up from his chair and moving sideways like a crab along the backs of the other seats in the command center, Mack quickly sat down next to Allen.
An exhausted looking woman, with what looked like cat ears on the side of her head was staring at the camera. For a moment, Mack was stunned. She was beautiful, even with bags under her eyes. Like the original alien in the first transmissions, she was lithe, and her hair was a dark black.
“Peace!” was about the only word that fell from her mouth that Mack was able to understand.
“Well, that’s something,” said Mack, looking at the message as it looped.
“They’re friendly, Mack!” Allen exclaimed as he looked over at him.
Mack nodded. “Looks like it, yeah. What if they’re not, though? What if this is all a ruse?”
Allen shook his head and stood up. Kicking off from the floor, he did a quick pirouette in the air gesturing at everything around him.
“Then we die a few years earlier! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trapped in this bunker afraid to even stick my nose out into the wide world ever again, do you?” asked Allen.
Mack smiled. “This coming from a civvie? I thought I was supposed to be the one advocating something stupid.”
Allen rolled his eyes. “I’m serious, Mack. We’ve got, what? Twenty years of food left? And then we all kill one another, or just waste away! I’d rather we follow Mars’ example at the very least and go out swinging. Or better yet,” Allen pointed at the screen, “maybe they are telling the truth and they only want to help us fight the aliens who attacked us! The enemy of my enemy and all that!”
“Alright, so what do we do?”
Allen blinked. “What?”
“What do we do about it? I can’t reengage the communications console. That’s been locked down under the security code that Pastore has. Heck even powering it up in this state will set off alarms. We can’t contact them.”
Allen stopped dead for a moment, thinking. “The portable arrays, the ones you guys would use in the field. They still work, right?” he asked.
Mack nodded. “Sure, but they aren’t built to transmit that far.”
“It’s fine. If they’re listening, it’ll show up loud and clear! It’s not like their will be much interference anyway when you take the thing out there.”
“Alright, sure. But why exactly am I the one taking it out onto the surface? You’re the one all up in arms about this.”
Allen blinked. All he could muster in response was, “uhh.”
“I’m still technically under orders, it’s not like Pastore can do anything to you. You’re not military.”
Allen opened his mouth to argue, and then shut it. “Really? That’s the excuse you’re going with?”
“Yep.”
Allen slowly nodded and glanced back at the computer console.
“Fuck it. I’m going to go insane if I have to spend another day down here, much less a decade!”
“That’s the spirit.”
Getting up from his seat, Allen stood and loped across the command center. Pulling one of the old communication arrays from its shelf, he slung it over his shoulder.
“I’m not seeing you do this, by the way,” said Mack.
“We’re either going to be dead, or we’re going to have some new friends.”
“I’m going to go insane down here before you do. Go!” growled Mack.
Allen nodded and left the command center, loping down the hall towards the base entrance and airlock. He’d stood in front of it before, thinking about going outside. Today he would do it!
Stepping into the airlock preparation chamber, Allen grabbed a suit from the rack and laid it down on the bench. Steeling himself, Allen stared at it for a moment.
“Fuck it,” he repeated to himself.
Shakily putting the suit on, Allen pulled a helmet off of the rack and put it over his head. He hadn’t left the confines of the bunker in nearly a decade. No one had. With the lockout in place, though, this was the only way to make contact. The only way to say that Humanity was not afraid. Or at least to say that one tenth of Humanity wasn’t afraid.
Stepping into the airlock, Allen closed his eyes as the atmosphere cycled. A cold, oppressive silence filled his ears and he grimaced. He’d never practiced for EVA’s; he’d been trained only for internal operations and modifications. The only time he had ever been in a suit like this was on Earth, to practice in case of emergency.
Ignoring the fact that a single puncture in the suit would kill him, Allen opened his eyes. The outer airlock door slowly trundled open, exposing the ramp that led up to the lunar surface.
Allen skipped forward, the gait that he had developed over 8 years hardly impeded by the extra few kilograms of the suit. Moving slowly up the ramp, he hesitated for only a moment at the lip of the bunker.
The structure had been built inside an ancient lava tube on the moon, and some primal part of his brain recognized the entrance of the cave as the crossing point from safety and security to danger. Ignoring the many warnings his brain was spitting out, Allen stepped past the lip of the cave into the bright sunlight. His helmet quickly adjusted, and Allen winced, looking at the landscape around him.
The first astronauts had described the moon as a place of magnificent desolation. That description was no less valid now. The moon would never host life like the Earth or perhaps Mars, but it was not uninviting towards the Humans that crawled along its surface with their flimsy layers of protection.
The moon had, after all watched Humanity grow, flourish, fight, and die on the planet below.
Looking up, Allen stared at the Earth.
She stared back at him. He was, after all, the first Human she had seen in nearly a decade.
Tearing his eyes away from his home, Allen kicked forward, up into the air, and drifted back down to the surface of the moon. Hopping higher and higher with each progressive kick, he moved through the regolith and dark grey rocks of the lava field surrounding the entrance to the bunker.
If he died out here now, he would be happy; not stuck inside, left to rot and fade away into dust.
He continued moving out away from the base.
Stopping at a random outcropping, Allen sat, and then laid down in the dust. He felt the suit’s internal power supply kick into overdrive to keep him warm, but he ignored it.
Pulling the long distance communicator off his shoulder, Allen held it up and carefully switched it on. Taking the lead from the device he plugged it into his suit, directly beneath the helmet.
The small HUD lit up informing him he now had long range but weak transmission strength.
Smiling, Allen keyed the mike.
“Hello from the moon!”