Chapter 1: One Small Step

His head ringing like a bell, David threw off his harness and lurched out of his seat, cradling his temples as he took a few stumbling steps into the passenger bay. It took him a few moments to remember where he was and to get his bearings again.

He glanced around, taking in his surroundings as he shook off the lethargy in his muscles. The deck beneath his feet was made up of a simple metal grate, and the exposed hull material of the walls was lined with crash couches – reinforced seats with straps to keep their occupants secure during superlight jumps. The space was as cramped as a coffin and sorely lacked any comforts or amenities.

Coursers were the fastest ships in the UNN fleet – designed to be a perfect balance between mass and energy output. They could cross interstellar distances remarkably quickly, ferrying VIPs, cargo, or important information wherever expediency was a factor. They were built for speed, not for pleasure cruises. The vessel resembled a skeletal jib like the arm of a crane that connected the cockpit and cargo area with the reactor and engines at the rear.

As he stumbled his way towards the door at the cockpit end of the bay, it slid open, and a man wearing Navy blues and a crew cut stepped through. His jaw was as square as his shoulders, a pair of steely, grey eyes peering out from beneath a weathered brow. David was a civilian, but even he had to fight the urge to snap his heels and pop a prim salute.

“Doctor O’Shea,” the man began. “How are you feeling after the jump?”

David recognized him now, the memories slowly flooding back to him. This was Lieutenant Shearer – his military liaison. They had met back on Earth before he had been whisked away on this interstellar road trip.

“Like someone hit me in the head with a rock,” he grumbled, blinking against the harsh light strips on the ceiling above. “I think I feel a migraine coming on.”

“Do enough jumps, and you’ll hardly notice,” Shearer replied.

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d be better served by avoiding jumps as much as possible,” David grumbled. “Have we arrived, or is this yet another temporary stay of execution until my brains can be scrambled by interdimensional travel again?”

“No, that was the last leg of the journey,” the Lieutenant replied. “We’ve arrived in the Trappist system – thirty-nine LY from Earth.”

“Thirty-nine point five-eight was the last accurate measurement, I believe,” David sighed. As his brain fog cleared, a fresh excitement began to overpower his usual skepticism.

The Trappist system was a very unusual one, with four terrestrial planets squarely within the star’s habitable zone and another three skirting its periphery. The entire solar system was dense and compact enough to fit well within Mercury’s orbit, but Trappist-1 was a red dwarf and was thus much cooler and dimmer than Sol. As interesting as Trappist was to astronomers and explorers, it had been off-limits since first contact, belonging to the Broker sphere of influence. The technologically advanced aliens were as enigmatic as they were uncooperative, and they had never allowed any outsiders to set foot in their territory. Until now...

“The pilot tells me that it’s quite a sight,” Shearer continued, nodding to the compartment behind him. “Care to take a look?”

David followed him through the automatic door, walking along a corridor that was lined with more compartments that housed the crew quarters and the pokey mess hall. Behind another sliding panel was the bridge – a similarly compact space taken up mostly by a single bank of consoles behind which the pilot was sitting. He was surrounded by the glow of holographic displays, information scrolling across their shimmering readouts as he swiped at touch panels and hit switches.

He turned in his seat as the pair entered, but David didn’t even hear his greeting. His eyes locked onto the view beyond the frost-encrusted bridge windows that looked out into space, widening in awe.

They had landed on the outskirts of the solar system, as was customary to avoid collisions with other ships and stellar bodies, superlight calculations being inherently imprecise. He could see the faint red glow of the star in the distance, its color and apparent luminosity reminding him of a sunset, but that wasn’t all that he could see.

There were planets.

In most solar systems, planets were spaced millions of kilometers apart, even the closest ones only visible as bright stars from the vantage points of their neighbors. Here, David could see them with the naked eye. Not only that, but he could see all of them, and they were large enough for him to make out details. There was 1h – the outermost planet – so close to the ship that it appeared as large as a softball. It was visible out of the right cockpit window, and a glance was all it took to give David a wealth of information about its properties. It was highly reflective, making it shine a dull orange in the star’s dim light, its surface crisscrossed with cracks.

“My God,” David muttered, noticing the towering geysers that were spewing up into its thin atmosphere from the icy surface. They must have been hundreds of kilometers tall, forming glittering ice crystals that rained back down to the surface. “Are those cryovolcanoes – like the water-vapor plumes on Enceladus? That suggests an ice sheet with a subsurface ocean, warmed by tidal heating, perhaps!”

“Getting readings of about a hundred and seventy Kelvins from the surface,” the pilot added as he checked his display. “Hell, that’s barely colder than Earth’s poles. You could walk around down there with a thick coat.”

“Incredible,” David mused, walking over to the window as though it might give him a closer look. “Even so far from the system’s star, it’s just straddling the frost line. The orbital period is, what ... nineteen days?”

“Know a lot about planets?” Shearer asked. The Lieutenant was considerably less excited than his two traveling companions.

“My PhD isn’t in the study of extrasolar planets, but yes,” David replied dismissively. “Are you not fascinated by this? Do you understand how floored you should be right now?”

“I’ll leave the gawking to you two,” he chuckled.

As David tore his gaze from 1h, he turned his eyes to the other planets, the balls of rock seeming to hang there in the velvet darkness like colorful yuletide decorations. At this distance, he could make out enough surface features to get a read on their environments, each one more surprising than the last. He could see terrestrial, Earth-like planets with oceans and continents, a body completely covered in water that looked like a perfect azure marble, and even a Venus-like planet that was enveloped in swirling clouds.

“I’m actually kind of angry that the Brokers kept this from us,” he said. “This system is a playground for astronomers and planetary surveyors. Just think of what we could learn if they gave us free rein to explore all of these bodies. Look at 1f!” he added, gesturing to it enthusiastically. “That’s a planet-spanning ocean! Do you understand what that means?”

“Maybe that’s their homeworld?” the pilot suggested.

“Possible,” David replied. “I’d hedge my bets on one of the terrestrial planets – 1e, perhaps. From what we’ve been able to gather from long-range observation, it appears to have conditions very close to that of Earth.”

“This is all very fascinating, but have you received any communications from our gracious hosts yet?” Shearer asked. “I’d expect them to-”

He was interrupted as an object emerged from superlight ahead of the ship, creating a vibrant gas cloud that began to expand in its wake, smearing across space like running watercolor paints. It was what remained of the interstellar medium that had been captured by the vessel’s superlight manifold – a bubble that enveloped the ship – its properties altered by the interdimensional jaunt.

“Speak of the devil,” the pilot muttered, angling the microphone on his headset towards his mouth.

“Broker vessel, this is the UNN Courser Paul Revere. I’m transmitting our identification codes to you now – please stand by.”

“Interesting response time,” David mused, crossing his arms as he watched the ship through the main viewport.

“What do you mean?” Shearer inquired

“We’re right on time, but there’s a degree of uncertainty involved in long-range jump calculations,” the doctor explained. “They couldn’t have known exactly where we would land – they’d only have a radius of decreasing probability from our stated target coordinates. That means they likely detected the gravitational wave that was created when we emerged, and since that wave travels at light speed, I’ll bet they have a presence on 1h. That’s the only planet close enough to explain how quickly they reacted. Any satellites in the outer system would have taken much longer to transmit the data to the inner planets.”

“An early warning system, then,” the Marine replied with an understanding nod. “They don’t like uninvited guests.”

“Judging by their history, that seems a likely explanation.”

The Broker vessel was another source of fascination for David. It looked like the classical depiction of a UFO – a cigar-shaped object covered in a silver coating that almost resembled cooking foil. It was flat and featureless, with no visible panels or windows, gliding through space with no obvious form of propulsion. The Brokers were hundreds of years more advanced than any other Coalition species, including humans, so there was no telling what kind of technology they had been hoarding. Asking them to share hadn’t exactly worked out thus far.

A reply came through from the alien ship – just a tinny, synthetic voice with no video to accompany it.

“Human vessel, this is Broker system authority. Prepare your passenger for transport.”

“Not very talkative,” the pilot muttered, covering his mic.

“That’s you,” Shearer said, giving David a nudge. “Pack up your gear and report to the cargo hold as soon as you’re ready. Don’t leave anything behind. I suspect they’re not gonna let us come back for a while.”

“If you say so,” David replied, feeling a twinge of anxiety.

When he had been offered the opportunity to travel to Trappist and become the first human to set foot on a Broker world, he had agreed without much thought. Whatever dangers he might face paled in comparison to the wealth of information he might glean and the renown that he would earn in the scientific community. Only now was it truly dawning on him that he might be left completely alone with these mysterious creatures – wholly at their mercy. They were not hostile, and they were an advanced species, but he couldn’t exactly call a taxi to take him home if something went wrong.

“Looking a little pale in the face there, Doc,” Shearer said.

David shook his head as if to dispel the intrusive thoughts, then headed for his quarters. It didn’t take him long to pack up his equipment – he hadn’t needed to unpack any of it during the trip, and he hadn’t been allowed to bring very much to begin with. All he carried was a rucksack and a pair of hard cases the size of duffel bags that protected his more sensitive gear.

He made his way to the cargo bay, wondering why he wasn’t being taken to the docking umbilical, finding Shearer waiting there for him beside an open storage crate.

“Got a present for you,” the Lieutenant said, gesturing to its contents. “Courtesy of the Marine Corps.”

David set down his two cases and leaned over to get a better look. Nestled in protective foam packaging was a folded suit and some kind of helmet.

“What is it?” he asked.

“This is the latest version of standard-issue UNN pressure armor,” Shearer declared proudly. “This is actually just the environment element without the supplemental ceramic plating that secures over the top of it. This baby is rated for hard vacuum, it has Kevlar woven into the lining that will protect you from breaches and even shrapnel, and it has heating and cooling elements that will regulate your body temperature in a wide variety of extreme environments. You could go for a walk on Europa and be perfectly toasty, and you wouldn’t even break a sweat on Borealis. It’s also equipped with dozens of electronic monitoring systems that will make sure you’re kept safe and sound.”

“Am I expecting shrapnel?” David demanded, cocking an eyebrow skeptically.

“Not unless you really piss off the Brokers,” Shearer replied. “They didn’t tell us much about what you should expect when you get ... wherever they’re taking you, but they did say that you needed a suit rated for some very specific conditions.”

“And what conditions were those?”

“Barometric pressure, oxygen filtering, thermo-regulation. You’re going underwater.”

“Thank you so much for telling me this now, ten minutes before I step off the ship,” David grumbled. “Fortunately, I can swim.”

“I’m sure you have all the certificates,” the Lieutenant added with a smirk. “Before you leave, you need to learn how to operate this suit and how to get in and out of it on your own, because there won’t be anybody to help you down there.”

“Very well,” David sighed, shrugging off his pack in resignation. “You’ve been waiting to spring this on me, haven’t you? You didn’t bat an eye when we saw one of the most amazing sights ever witnessed by a human, but this suit has you as excited as a kid in a candy store.”

“I’m a military man, Doc,” he replied as he lifted the helmet from the crate. “They pay me to point XMRs at things that the Admiralty would prefer weren’t there anymore. Take those off,” he added, nodding to the doctor’s clothes. “Underwear only inside these things – it needs to be in contact with your skin.”