Chapter 2

I read through L&S’s contract, which was similar to my current one in that there was no legalese. I was tempted, even without the extra zero. Mars was a safe place for me to get my shit together and away from humanity. Legacy was a completely different animal. It was dangerous. Deadly dangerous. With thousands of possible chances of dying per second. Every second.

A single seal, chip, screw, failure, micro asteroid, micro black hole, collision or radiation flare could and would mean that the mission, ship and all aboard. I and the mission would then end violently and quietly a very long way from anywhere I could consider home.

Legacy III had made one other jump to a nearby star system and returned safely, only to be retired and completely disassembled by Milsner’s team.

That was a huge plus in their court for me accepting the job. The extra zero was strange and excessive. Too excessive, I thought. My contract on Mars, including bonuses, was for 100 million if I lasted the full Martian year. Before I arrived on Mars, Mark Indigo held the record at 312 days, earning twenty-five million dollars for his time and efforts. Silver received the same now that she was back on Earth.

Two Hundred Million per year didn’t make sense to me. Half paid up front. There were even strange clauses about me being the ‘Captain of the Ship’ and a list of my rights of command, one of which stated that while I remained onboard and Captain the Legacy, no one, including the owners, could gainsay my orders. Yet they could fire me at any time, for any reason, AND only if they were not on board any version of Legacy in which I was given Captainship.

The worst part was that Miss Thomas had been too accommodating. She was a shark, I knew it, she knew it, hell, everyone that ever had dealings with her or L&S knew that she was the super-shark that ate other sharks.

They wanted me on Earth as soon as I signed. Legacy IV needed twelve months to complete the internals ‘officially’. Miss Thomas hinted that it was considerably less than that. People were the issue, not the ship. Of the last batch of twelve perspective spacefarers, only two passed to stage 4 of the trials. I wasn’t sure and had asked the true reason on why such a harsh testing requirement was necessary. Each jump between systems should only take one or two dozen days subjectively. The onboard clock for Legacy III read that less than ten days elapsed during the fifteen-day trip to Alpha Centauri. Hell, if they were that worried about the effects on us during the jump, just sedate or cordon off the crew.

I wasn’t being told everything. Nor was anyone else.

Or I wasn’t being told that something very specific which was worrying them. Until I found out what, I think I would pass on their offer.

...

“Are you certain, Geoff?”

“Positive, Miss Thomas. You will not give me the full brief until I sign, and I won’t agree unless I get that information. Something doesn’t mesh and you know it.”

The smile which lit her elfin face warned me of my impending doom. “See you tomorrow morning. Good night, Geoffrey.” Click.

What the hell? Was that another of her ‘tests’?

...

At 06:58, Mars mean time, alarms sounded, disturbing me from my breakfast of coffee and honey flavored algae flakes. Athens Base was the first permanent, continuously occupied settlement on Mars. Even if that settler was one sole technician, it had never been not occupied in the first seven years since its inception. Thus, it earned the right for Ground zero on the Mars world clock.

Athens was also the storage depot for all initial housing and ground-based transportation planetwide. The Space Hook would deliver and retrieve people and machines from a nearby plateau. That Hook was more cost effective and safer than the personal transports docked at the station. Those transports were meant for running about Mars’ moons and upper atmosphere, not descending into and out of gravity wells.

Through the southern window, I witnessed a red and white shuttle descend from the bright morning sky. A first for me. I, and everyone else who visited Mars planetside traveled via the space elevator attached to Grenadier space station or the L&S Shuttle assigned to Grenadier. To my knowledge, there were only four personal craft similar to that red and white one in existence –which could travel through space and in and out of gravity wells freely, all unpurchasable for any price. Each of the four vehicles employed no identifiable means of propulsion or fuel source.

The famous black and white Shuttle One, owned by the fearsome Lady Strife, CEO of Strife International and Hope station, and the smaller blue and white one owned by the ungodly brilliant Larkin and Smith owner Catherine Larkin, my ultimate boss, were two of the four. The third, a red and white tour bus sized vehicle, was strongly suspected to be Sydney Thomas’s personal shuttle, but others had been seen using it when the Manipulator Extraordinaire was elsewhere, unlike the blue and black ones who were for their owners’ exclusive use only.

The fourth, a green and white two-person super craft, had been seen in action around Earth, but no one reported knowing who it belonged to.

I just Knew that Miss Sydney Thomas was inside that red and white space car. Visiting me unannounced planetside didn’t feel right after I just refused her offer. Placing my unfinished breakfast in the fridge, I sought out my skinnies and quickly dressed.

Miss Thomas was accompanied by a guard in black power armor. That wasn’t surprising, what was surprising was that she wore a cream colored windbreaker and brown slacks while exiting her vehicle. And low hiking boots. No envirosuit at all.

The rumors of her owning a personal force field were just proven to be true.

As she and her guard closed in on the airlock, her mechanical bodyguard veered off to walk the area with a floating camera trailing, while the petite woman tapped the entry code before stepping through the reinforced airlock.

“Good morning, Geoffrey, may I enter your home?”

“You may.” Halting just inside the communications hub, which one of the earliest Tech’s commandeered for her home instead of the smaller housings that we were originally supposed to live in, Miss Thomas toggled the switch, closing the airlock door behind her.

“Will you show me around?”

Warily, I replied “okay” and wondered what she was playing at.

I showed my boss’s, boss’s, boss, the comm office, which had a permanent active connection to Grenadier station. The main conference room had been converted into a hydroponics farm. One of seven in the small base. The other six were in three separate buildings in case of a disaster. The small administrator’s office had converted into my bedroom. Mostly a cot and clothes closet. The storage room became my dining room and kitchen.

“Thyme, basil, chili peppers. Why only those three?” She asked about my herb collection, which I grew myself. Keeping them in planters located in the building I spent the most time in made sense to me, who was not born with a green thumb.

“Limited room for more. With those three, I get enough flavor to tide me over between food shipments.”

“And, of course, your coffee,” she teased.

“My one concession to civilization.”

Turning to me while standing in the door, almost as if to block my exit from the kitchen, she changed the topic abruptly. “Have you ever watched a show called System Gate?”

“When I was a kid, maybe an old rerun once or twice.” Her out of the blue question warned me that I might not like the direction of this conversation. Sydney Thomas never did or said anything without a reason.

“Alpha Centauri A has a similar large ring orbiting the star at 10 AUs from its sun. It’s a little over nine kilometers in diameter and two hundred ninety meters thick. We think it is coated in solid gold but were unwilling able to take a sample. It looks just like the one from the show. Except for the size and the thousands of runes engraved on one side of the surface.”

Standing in the middle of the doorway of my kitchen/dining room, she looked and sounded serious. I didn’t like it. I knew she was not making the supposed ‘System Gate’ up.

“Seven of the runes were glowing in both ultraviolet and soft X-ray. We believe that the gate is active and has a programmed destination. We also believe that we were followed back by someone or something. You witnessed that with the ‘silver sphere’ you reported. Whoever it is, it uses the same dimensional travel as we do and probably an advanced version compared to ours. We also suspect it was an automated craft sent to observe and report.”

“And you want me to take a peek to see what is on the other side of the System Gate?”

“Eventually.” She paused for effect, “Our trials with chimps and pigs came out clean in our first jumps.”

Wait, weren’t the Legacies supposed to be unmanned?

Oh. They were technically ‘un-manned’.

“We want humans to be the first to meet whoever is on the other side of that Gate.” She was being cryptic, I felt that Miss Sydney Thomas was leaving something out.

“I’m not a cypher nor a diplomat. The only language I speak is English with a scattering of phrases I learned from others stationed here. Why me?”

“One: you understand fusion well enough to repair it on a daily basis. Two: you can survive solitude, if necessary for long durations, and stay sane. Three: you can keep the world’s biggest secret. Four: you have a steadiness that few do. Five: you are trustworthy. Six: I trust your judgment.”

Somehow, I felt that the last reason stated was the most important one in her view. “Are you failing your candidates because of possible meetings with aliens?”