Chapter 7: Alpha Centauri

Rose spent little more than two hours a day in our shared office and, even then, she was quietly working hard on the next version of her fighter. Between she, Marissa, and Lady Strife, they had narrowed down the fault to one of two components. One major fix and one was a minor part replacement.

Since it could have been either, and without nothing left of the fighter, which exploded after it failed, Lady Strife demanded that both parts be upgraded before she would approve a new craft be assembled with Beam weapons installed.

Rose grumbled and didn’t even swear. She had tacitly agreed with her Master’s conditions.

Walking into our office five days later, Rose was talking to Marissa on the Comm when she suddenly stopped mid-sentence with an ‘OH!’ and dropped her coffee mug listlessly.

I looked up concerned.

Rose scanned the room, mechanically walked to the whiteboards, and erased everything that I had on them. Then she began writing. Very slowly.

And wrote some more.

And wrote even more.

For the next six hours, she wrote, when I made her take a break and eat something, her right hand frozen in the position it was in and she used her left to eat and drink.

She wouldn’t even stand until I helped her up, and once I did, she walked right back to the same whiteboard and continued where she left off. When I comm’ed Lady Strife when it first happened, Rose’s Master stopped by with her own coffee, noticed the spill, and walked around the mess while examining her student’s equations.

With a single nod, Lady Strife turned to me and said, “Protect her with your life.” She then turned and left, closing the door behind her.

Strife wasn’t kidding. If anything happened to Rose, I was a dead man.

I cleaned the coffee spill and watched, hoping Rose would be fine.

From what I could see of Rose’s diagrams and equations, she was working on a better, impossibly better, power converter of some type that I didn’t remotely understand.

I watched, took notes of my own, and made sure that she was fed and watered.

Six hours and ten minutes later, Rose stepped back and looked over her work.

And smiled. “Out Fucking Standing!”

She shook her right hand a few times, rubbing her thumb while walking to me in my chair.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Geoff, I want you to close your eyes and picture what I wrote, can you do that?” she asked in return.

“Most of the concepts.” I could, “I didn’t understand half of it, though,” I admitted.

“Just fucking close your eyes and try, dammit.”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the whiteboards and the concepts she had been developing. Rose’s soft kiss surprised me.

“You are awesome. Because of you, I found my Linkage. Now I owe you two.”

Smartly she turned away and practically danced down the hall, seeking out her Master to deliver the good news. I tried not to stare at that oh-so-firm teenaged ass and to not think about the kiss from a girl literally half my age.

She tasted of strawberries and innocence.

...

Over the next ten days, I saw Rose a combined five hours. And I felt those hours were mandated by Lady Strife as a means to keep her out of their special Device Lab in which the Device Masters and Apprentice were the only ones allowed to enter.

Instead of a cheery bouncing studious fifteen-year-old, Rose had become a woman on a mission. She had seemed to mentally age overnight and maintained that seriousness over the ten days that she put her all into her new Linkage Device.

Like the previous time when she Created her first Device for her Fighter, Rose collapsed immediately after making it. How ever they did what they did, it took a significant toll on their bodies and minds.

Even possibly their souls, if the blatant hints that Rose dropped earlier were any indication.

Again, Lady Strife ordered me to care for her Disciple on pain of Death should anything untoward befall her student. I didn’t need the threat, or promise, I was happy to assist in Rose’s recovery.

Even if I was uncomfortable treating a sixteen year old girl who was infatuated with me.

Ten days later, the three of us stood in the observatory on Dock-19 and listened to PilotBot-77b go through his checklist. This time, I too was provided with a headset to listen in on the PilotBot-77b’s rapid-fire checkoffs.

I even prepared in advance to have lunch, snacks, and dinner delivered. I learned, even if neither of the two women standing beside me had.

...

“PilotBot-77b. Signal when you are one thousand kilometers from your current position.”

Rose sagged, I caught her before she collapsed and sat her in a folding chair prepared just for this occasion.

“Rose, what did I say about eating before and after you Create?”

“I can’t eat like you two,” she complained.

The two bickered all during our late high-calorie dinner.

...

“PilotBot-77b, reduce thrust to 5% ... Choose a target larger than five thousand tons ... Single shot, left weapon, 10% power...”

Without saying a word, Rose jumped in place. “PilotBot-77b, single shot right weapon, 10% power.”

She grinned madly.

“PilotBot-77b, choose a different target larger than five thousand tons ... dual shot, both weapons, 10% power.”

“YES!” she said silently with her left arm shooting to the sky balled up in a fist.

“PilotBot-77b, choose a different target larger than five thousand tons ... dual shot, both weapons, 100% power.”

“YES!” she exclaimed soundlessly.

“PilotBot-77b, choose a different target larger than five thousand tons ... dual shot, both weapons, 100% power.”

“PilotBot-77b, choose a different target larger than five thousand tons ... dual shot, both weapons, 100% power.”

“PilotBot-77b, increase thrust to 25%. Choose a different target larger than five thousand tons ... dual shot, both weapons, 100% power.”

“PilotBot-77b, increase thrust to 33%...”

“PilotBot-77b, increase thrust to 75%...”

“PilotBot-77b, increase thrust to 100%...”

“PilotBot-77b, maintain speed, keep firing every five seconds but make sure you do not have a viable target within one thousand kilometers. In sixty minutes, cease firing and return to Dock-19. Make sure you request clearance on channel 55555. I will be expecting your safe arrival.”

This time, Lady Strife was at the receiving end of Rose’s full body hug and tears. An endless stream of thank-yous sounded out from the openly crying girl, until she was completely overcome by emotion and Lady Strife sat her student down with her hand on the girl’s shoulder.

I snuck out at that point, letting the two have their space and time together.

...

Rose appeared in our office at 10:00 the following morning, dragging, yet jubilant.

“Long night?” I asked.

“Haven’t slept yet,” she admitted.

I could imagine. “What’s next for your fighter?” I asked.

“More testing. The inertialess build will take months. Months I don’t have,” she complained.

Rose was torn, she greatly wanted to learn from her Grandmaster on how to build shields, but that meant a year on Earth. Possibly more, she admitted. Yet that time she had to spend on Earth meant time away from her Master and improving her fighter.

“What is that mantra that you and Lady Strife keep chanting?” I encouraged her.

“‘Foundation, Foundation, Foundation.’ I know! I can’t pass up Grandmaster’s invitation,” Rose grumbled. “Even that immobile Sister of mine spent almost two years studying with Master Larkin and Grandmaster. I just don’t want to go right now!”

“I thought you weren’t leaving until after I left with the first batch?”

“The sacrifices are leaving Earth in nine days. Master informed me that I am to leave for Earth in twenty-six days on the return Shuttle.”

That sucked.

“It’s only a year,” I encouraged her, “You can come back up when you want, right?”

“Yes.” She stood and mumbled something about ‘understand’. “I think I need a nap, I’m being a bitch. Talk later, Geoff.”

I watched her walk forlornly down the hall and around the corner. It felt like something more was at play that she wasn’t saying and, unless she volunteered, I would remain in the dark.

...

Rose buried herself in her studies for the next three weeks straight. Meanwhile, Lady Strife had me don a custom-built suit of power armor that she had tailored to my body, and ordered me to practice wearing it around the station twenty-four hours a day. Apparently, it used to belong to one of her personal bodyguards before he retired and returned to Earth.

Unlike the EVA suits that the welders and technicians used for working outside of the space station, this suit was POWER ARMOR! like the super heroes wore and light-years beyond the standard EVA suits that the astronauts wore these days. Short of repeatedly getting shot with a bazooka, or a micro-asteroid flying at a significant fraction of the speed of light, I was mostly safe from harm.

The Power Armor I was given also enhanced my strength and endurance greatly, with a moderate boost to my agility. The equipped sensor suite was a marvel. I would have killed to have this during my time on mars.

The first few days wearing it, Rose laughed at me; telling me that I walked like a duck. A zombie duck, she clarified, while laughing even harder.

Marissa summoned me the following day and nearly swooned. Telling me that I looked beautiful and proposed marriage on the spot. And she was serious. I left the poor unstable woman in tears with my gentle rejection.

As for the Outer Disciples, whom I had daily but very limited contact with, each and every single one regarded me with full out hatred and jealousy in their eyes and demeanor.

I didn’t understand, even when Rose tried, unsuccessfully, to explain it with, “You have what they will never have. Ignore them.” I knew she wasn’t referring to the armor that I was wearing, yet something else more valuable in their eyes.

I did privately admit that wearing Strife’s Power Armor made me look and feel cool. Very cool. I could pass on sleeping in it though.

The operator’s manual was a short seven hundred pages of very well documented ‘how to care for’ my new coolness.

Most of that manual was troubleshooting steps. The first one hundred seven pages were dedicated to the actual first time use and operation of the Strife Mark XVII Adjutant Armor.

A week later, and after even Rose admitted that I walked less like a zombie duck, Lady Strife escorted me to Legacy IV, via her personal black shuttle, and into what was soon to be my ship, wearing her own very infamous Power Armor. Hers was a great deal sleeker than mine and deadlier looking. Not that I understood how or why I felt that, since hers used less volume than mine did, but I KNEW it was.

Lady Strife started with the airlocks, with a brief explanation, then moved on to the emergency doors, emergency walls really, the Bridge, my personal suite, the smaller crews’ suites, the galleys, the exercise and entertainment rooms, the scientific rooms, of which there were twelve, the pantries, the fire control rooms, the stasis rooms, in case of emergencies, or if I was tired of someone’s mouth and wanted them out of the way, the server rooms, the Bot rooms, and so forth.

That first day we remained in the living area of the ship. The second day we entered the hydroponic section, a good sized tri-level cargo hold with two airlocks horizontally before and after, followed by entering into engineering itself. The first fusion plant beyond the first water tank towered above us, filling nearly the whole reinforced body of the ship; the Boring Device was only a third of its volume and Lady Strife assured me that it needed every single Watt that the plant spat out to operate, which was why there was a second fusion plant on the other side of Marissa’s Boring Device equally as large, for backup and auxiliary power.

Past the second fusion plant and the fourth mammoth water tank was a triple set of blast door/airlocks, and then a large cargo hold. One meant to hold a personal shuttle.

Eventually.

Odd in some ways, but in others, considering the design, the only real way to reach the shuttle was for it to launch and then have it pull alongside and dock with the front side of the ship. Unless there was an emergency and I allowed the crew access through engineering, which I didn’t ever see happening, short of being boarded.

Lady Strife was of the same opinion. Or a much harsher one, of donning my new Power Armor, blow the air and passengers to space and leave the ship a vacuum until I and the Legacy were safe.

Thankfully, that was a last resort.

As Captain, I had complete access to the ship. Every door, including the bathrooms and the crews’ personal bedroom suites, opened at my command. If any of the crew forced their doors shut, I was given a command override which would keep that door bolted shut until I was safely docked or felt like being nice, which Lady Strife laughed darkly at, and allowed them to enter a stasis pod or the airlock, my choice.

There were also a few armories on board. One located under my shower, which I alone could access. Two more were under and above the bridge and a few other small weapon lockers, all of which were left off the official blueprints.

There was one other important item that Lady Strife wished to get through my thick skull. While on board I was to always be addressed as ‘Captain’. “Even if you are fucking them in the ass at the time, do not allow anyone to call you anything other than Captain. If they do, airlock or stasis.

“Do you understand, Captain?” asked the Lady, who never called me anything but Captain since I first stepped aboard her space station. Nor did she allow anyone call her anything other than Master or Lady while on the station.

Now I understood why.

She was in charge and didn’t allow anyone who entered her domain to have the slightest thoughts otherwise.

“I do, Lady Strife.”

“See to it that you remember that.”

Then she introduced me to her, my, defense bots.

HOLY SHIT!

If I planned on taking over a small country, or a not so small one, like Bolivia, I had my army of four bots to accomplish that goal for me.

The next day I spent in the newly pressurized bridge. In the center of the bridge, where my station was once planned to be, was now a cut and separated scaled mock-up of the Legacy IV, which was wired to the emergency computers for ease of identifying what and where the trouble was.

I had a similar one in my cabin, but that one was smaller and holographic.

Which was VERY COOL in itself and only second to the Power Armor that Lady Strife had given me.

Discounting Legacy IV as a whole, of course.

For four hours a day, I walked the halls of the Legacy, familiarizing myself to its greatness. This was going to be my home soon and I wanted to know every inch of it.

For two hours a day, I subjected myself to Marissa’s teachings on how the Boring Device worked and ... yeah ... that lasted a week.

I wasn’t ready for either her obsessive teachings nor her presence, and especially not for the E.T. physics involved.

Rose laughed at me and said, “Told Ya,” when I admitted defeat, but I had to try.

...

And then the crew, subjects, contestants, sacrifices, or whichever they were called by the powers that be, finally arrived.

Rose broke down crying. She didn’t want to go to Earth. She did want to go to Earth. And a whole lot of other conflicting female teenaged super-genius hormones that I would never understand came into play.

The arriving eight crewmembers were divided into two groups of four, which I had expected but, oddly, I wasn’t allowed to meet or interact with any of them.

I was given a dossier on the first four allowed to ‘crew’ the Legacy for our initial voyage to Alpha Centauri and that was it. Two men and two women from around the globe. All with strong scientific backgrounds and three with military ones. All four spoke English fluently. A prerequisite of joining the crew, since I didn’t speak any other language well enough to ask for directions, let alone converse.

Two mornings later, Rose entered my room, an hour before I usually woke, in her customary deep red skinnys and sat on my bed beside me.

“Geoff, are you awake?”

“I am,” now. I responded with my eyes closed.

“Master told me that, if we fucked, I would be spending the next three years on Earth.” she sighed.

My eyes opened.

“Don’t look at me like that. I know you watch me all the time. I want you too. Since we have to wait, we wait. Just be safe and come back to me. Promise?”

“I promise to be safe. I want to see you too.” And what you look like at eighteen or so.

“I know, you want me to be older. I can wait. I hope you can too. Remember what I call your volunteer crew?”

Sacrifices.

“You need to think of them that way. Some will break under the strain. Master gives it a 95% chance and no one makes money wagering against Master. You need to look for the signs. Just like on Mars. When they start Fraying and Cracking, you have to put them in stasis or kick them off of the ship. You and it are too important. Got it?”

“Are you feeling okay, you didn’t even swear once,” I teased.

“Be nice. I’m serious. Even Marissa is worried for you and not just her ship.”

“I promise to keep on my toes.”

“Everyone will get wristbands which look similar to yours, but theirs will monitor their body functions, like their stress levels and their blood pressure, and not have any protection fields. You have full access to that information. Keep up on it.”

I knew that.

“I promise to check it twice a day.”

“You can have sex anywhere you want with whomever you want, just don’t let anyone in your cabin — you need to promise me that too.”

“I promise.” That was an easy one, I had already promised myself that one.

“I left a gift on your ship. Promise me that you will use it once a day.”

“I promise.”

“You might not like it but every human needs you alive. You are more important than everyone you will ever take on board your ship. Remember that. Now kiss me so I can meet the shuttle that is waiting for me.”

I gave her a gentle, yet chaste kiss, which she accepted with a glare.

“You better do better than that next time, or we will have words, Captain Geoffrey Volkstag.” Exiting my room, she looked at me once more and then slowly disappeared from view.

“Have fun on Earth, Rose,” I called out before she left my suite. She heard me but didn’t reply.

...

The day before we boarded, I met the first voyage’s ‘sacrifices’. One of whom came as a great surprise. The dossiers had no names attached when I was given them.

Karen van der Waal, a botanist from South Afrika, had routinely sent me five to ten thousand word emails, discussing her week in detail, including pictures of her personal greenhouse grown flowers and spices, or a wedding photo when she married to her husband, Kenta Osy, a black native, which disturbed her family a great deal.

She wasn’t the only one who had done so, but hers were the most engaging.

I skimmed the first few months of them, but soon after that I couldn’t but help myself to read each and every one in detail and respond. God knew my days were boringly routine and I had little to offer in return.

It wasn’t until later that I had begun to suspect a Sydney Thomas ploy, but by then it was too late.

Karen saluted me smartly and smiled a very happy smile.

THIS time I knew that my boss had a direct hand in Karen’s presence aboard the Legacy.

The three other scientists were all professionals, an Indian Chemist, an Egyptian Physicist, and the other female, a Brazilian Biologist, who smiled at me and everyone else with superiority and dominance, which she believed from her beauty and superior intellect were justly deserved.

After suiting up, I led the four into the Legacy, showed them their assigned rooms where they stowed their personal gear, and then gave a full tour of the living area of the ship.

Their professional gear had already been brought over and stowed in their assigned laboratories the day of their arrival.

“Will we get a full tour of the Legacy?” Abasi Hassan, the Egyptian Physicist, asked once the introductory tour was complete. His question garnered the interest of the rest.

“No. The engineering and propulsion parts of the ship are off limits.” Which he knew. He looked dissatisfied but dropped the subject. For now.

“But a model will be available for all of you to review on the bridge. You all saw the 1/10^th-scale model in the center of the room. Everyone can study that to their hearts content.

“Remember that you have each been assigned two laboratories, one with near zero gravity and one with 0.9g like the rest of the ship. They are labeled but please take care. We don’t have a nurse on board but plenty of doctors,” I joked. “None of whom knows how to use a Band-Aid.”

Getting serious, I continued. “During the transition, both in and out of Dimensional travel, I will require that everyone strap in the chairs inside their assigned sleeping chambers and remain strapped in until I give the all clear. Any injuries will be on you and, if any of you do suffer an injury during our voyage, I will have to lock you in the stasis pod, not to be released until we are docked at Hope. There will be no exceptions. Is that understood?”

It was. Those rules and more were clearly spelled out to my passengers/crew before they even signed up for the first testing phase.

“We depart for Alpha Centauri in,” I checked my watch, “ten hours and fifteen minutes. I hope we can all eat at least once a day together and, according to the questionnaire, 19:00 was the time everyone agreed on.

“One last thing I need to bring up. We are entering a dimension that no Earthling human has entered before. If anyone gets mental trauma, please alert someone. Or even just shout for help. That trauma might not even strike you at the second we cross over but can wait for days before it rears its ugly head.

“If you see imaginary aliens skittering about, yell out. Trust me, we rather be forewarned and think you are nuts than some boogieman’s lunch.”

“There is even an emergency button on everyone’s wrist band for that. Please share with the class if you see something or feel something that is odd. Even if you see a talking tree, let us know. It might save all of our lives, your own included.

“You all have baseline experiments to run and have had dinner. Just remember to pace yourselves. We have ten days to travel to Alpha Centauri, two days there, and ten days back.

“If you need me, I’ll be on the bridge until I turn in. Dismissed.”

My prepared speech completed, I breathed a sigh of relief and sought out my own station. I too had more learning to do.

...

At an hour before midnight, Karen returned to the bridge and sought me out.

“I never thought I’d meet you in person,” she grinned. And then began sharing her time at the trials, and the wait to come to Hope station. She spoke quickly, but not rapid-fire as expected. But she didn’t stop speaking...

But it was fun.

I turned in for the night at midnight and tried to unwind after a very long day. I hadn’t even had time to see what Rose left me. Until I walked into it.

Somehow, an addition to my bedroom developed a second door. A door which led to a simulator, Rose’s personal fighter simulator that one of her Uncle-Masters, or whatever he was called, programmed and constructed for her.

It could wait until tomorrow.

...

Checking each crewmember’s suite via camera and safety sensors, I comm’ed Lady Strife privately.

“All clear on my end, Lady.”

“Godspeed, Captain.” That was the all-clear signal, if she said anything else, I was to abort.

“Thank you, Lady Strife.”

I switched to the ship’s intercom, “Captain to crew, prepare for dock disengage. On three, two, one. Disengaged.” It felt odd not even having a slight shudder of the ship.

I selected the predetermined coordinates for AstroBot-22c to steer us towards, sat back and waited. For the next hour I played Wagner in the background a bit louder than should have. It felt appropriate.

I keyed off a few private messages, including a thank you to Rose, while trying my best not to stress out.

With a slight shudder of the ship, the engines, all four, turned off.

“Prepare to enter a new dimension in five minutes, please conclude your correspondence, for the ship’s antenna’s will be retracting in three minutes,” I reminded my crew, test subjects, sacrifices.

I slowly breathed in and out a few times to once again reduce my high stress levels.

In my own Strife provided Power Armor, I spoke to Hope, Mars, and Earth via my personal set of quantum entangled molecules which Lady Strife oversaw.

“This is Captain Geoffrey Volkstag, speaking from the space ship Legacy IV. This voyage that we are about to take is one for the betterment of mankind. Not just for a few men and women to get their names in some history book, but so that others who follow will have the opportunity themselves to leave Sol system and seek out new worlds.

“Worlds that I wish that our children will grow healthy and wise on. Worlds that I wish that our children will care for better than we did on our home world.

“Worlds that our race can use as staging points for further expansion, but not to the detriment of other species but for our own growth. Growth mentally, spiritually, and socially.

“Legacy IV’s purpose is to see whether it is feasible to use the Milsner Dimensional Boring Device for humans to visit other stars. Please keep us in your prayers.”

“God Bless all of Earth’s creatures. Activating Dimensional Boring in five, four, three, two, one.”

SHUDDER!

I fought to keep the contents of my stomach where it was supposed to be and my eyes inside my head.

Then reality snapped back and, other than a splitting headache and a mild case of acidic throat from the bile that tried to escape, I felt fine.

I started the testing routine on my computer and filled in the answers for the next hour. My passengers could wait.

Known to me, but not my passengers/crew, was that in this dimension Marissa figured out a way to fold space easier than in our own dimension. She had even been here in person once and returned.

No one said or even hinted, but this, I suspected, was the reason behind her endless weight gain. The unprotected dimensional hop that she did.

Somehow, Strife and Milsner fixed that issue for the rest of us.

But healing Marissa was an impossibility as long as she remained connected to that other dimension, or so I figured out. Thus ‘Master Sydney’ needed to ‘fix’ her and not ‘cure’ her.

According to the ship’s sensors, there was nothing in the dimension that we entered other than stellar bodies. No planets smaller than Jupiter, no moons and no rocky bodies floating around. Not even Earth or Saturn. But there was an abundance of neutrinos.

Something neither I, nor anyone else who held that knowledge, was about to share with the rest of humankind. Not even the scientists invited aboard were allowed to know either bit of information.

When asked what is out there, I responded with the company line, “You know I am not allowed to say. Even the information I get is censored.” Which they found all too easy to believe. The Bots did all of the navigation. No human was smart enough or fast enough to perform those calculations.

And there were no windows.

And Lady Strife had a reputation for being very hard on her enemies.

And no one understood Catherine Larkin when she began speaking math.

And no one had access to Marissa, other than those two.

Even I found me entirely believable when I gave that response.

I unlocked the crews’ doors after checking to make sure that they survived dimensional entry. Even better was that none of them sounded insane or lost their breakfast.

After a meal of salty crackers and pure water around the dinner table, we each in turn spoke of our feelings of entering this new dimension.

Disregarding the various degrees of headaches, ear aches, and eye wobbles, we completely agreed on the rest of the physical effects of dimensional hopping. Which was very encouraging. After my mandatory Q&A, the four headed towards their labs hurriedly to check on their experiments and plants.

I returned to my station on the bridge alone and booted up the next lesson on circuits...

A few hours later, Karen visited me again; she had just left the first layer of the Hydroponics room and came to report, plus talk to a friendly human.

Minutes after she left, Sanjay Shaw, our Chemist, strolled over with a box of juice in his hand, drinking through a straw.