Chapter 58

Third Mission, in system RKO-289 aboard the FUP Shuttle Royal Yacht in orbit around the planet called Thessaly, 2401 CE

Even resting in the right command seat, the copilot seat if I had a class 2a shuttle ticket, I could easily sense that everyone else on the Royal Yacht’s flight deck was excited as our Task Force formation started over the north pole of Thessaly again. I could hardly wait for the next 20 minutes to unfold, as this pass around the planet would reveal the first section of Continent Charlie to our combined scanning arrays. That was where our new home would be.

I was really enjoying my limited access to the six primary video cameras, and my inner geek was tickled pink that I had full control of one of the nine secondary video cameras deployed as part of the Royal Yacht’s sensor package. My PAW, trying to sound unimpressed down in my brain stem, lamented that with all the incredible technology and relative crew comfort the FUP designed into this class of vessel as a perk, every deep-pocketed researcher devoted to piddling about in the Big Black would coming flocking to the next Glenndeavor class deep-space exploration ship once it was open for business.

Part of me felt as if I might have to turn in my geek card. Even though we’d been briefed during one of the teleconferences on the complete sensor capabilities of the two Marine Armored Assault Shuttles making up the rest of the Task Force’s main scanning assets, right now for the life of me I couldn’t recall the information. And as I’d watched the landscape of the planet Thessaly revealed in my main high-definition monitor right in front of my seat, I didn’t give a space-rat’s ass that I couldn’t bring the information up in my mind. I knew an algorithm that combined ExServ’s normal planetary survey suite functions and some secret Marine Corp planetary assessment software controlled the six primary cameras in our shuttle’s array. But the true cherry on this assignment was the fact that four of the secondary cameras were reserved for the use of the crew on the Royal Yacht.

Juliet, as our Shuttle Commander and an Away Team member, had control of one of the secondary cameras. She authorized RY to use another, while I had access to the third because I was in the co-pilot seat, and Corporal Aisins had use of the fourth as the commander of our shuttle’s military assets.

Since our new Maori friends told us that everyone planet-side called this continent Thessaly, which was also their name for their planet, Captain Bertram decided the Task Force would follow that naming convention as well. No more alphabetical references, although I hadn’t heard the colonists names for any of the other continents yet.

However, everyone in the Task Force knew that the sweet spot, where the majority of any evacuation vehicles that might have to perform an unpowered EDL were projected to make planet fall, was located on this upcoming landmass—Thessaly. And somewhere in the sweet spot was a site that would be picked for our primary landing zone. In and around that landing zone would be our new home on Thessaly. Once the rest of the evacuation vehicles reached the planet, the sweet spot along with our labors and luck would have to sustain us, at least until a Federation relief force arrived. However long that was going to take.

By withholding information about the Tribes in the territories between the Purple Mountains and the Great Eastern River, as well as remaining mum about any people who might be found on the eastern side of that big river, the Maori contributed to our lack of intelligence. Right now we had no real clue about the likelihood of encountering humans already on the land we might want to claim as our own in the territory we called the sweet spot.

Everyone in the last Task Force teleconference agreed; once we’d finished our orbital survey of the planet, many of our questions concerning those issues would be answered. Still, we hoped our final pick of landing zones was going to be isolated enough not to cause any major territorial disputes—if there were unknown people found on the eastern side of the big river. Once we were on the ground there were only two ways anyone could gain any knowledge about the disposition of Task Force vessels, our personnel numbers, their distribution and activities, and our security measures and strong points. First, individuals could try to actually getting close enough to us to scout the territory we claimed as we waited for the rest of the Evacuation Fleet. The second way was by using one of the colonists’ old satellites to look down on some or all of the area we occupied. And that could only happen if the geostationary satellite or satellites above our sweet spot still worked.

Until we were to start landing, the Task Force would maintain an altitude of 36,500 kilometers above the planet’s surface. We’d be above the orbits of what was left of the colonists’ remaining satellite network and reduced the capabilities of anyone on Thessaly to conduct close surveillance on our formation. That altitude also gave our formation a 620-kilometer cushion from what Captain Bertram considered the worst of the navigational hazards presented by the colonists’ failing old-tech satellite system. With the data our long-range scans collected as we approached the planet, the Task Force already knew sometime in the past there were at least six satellites that must have fallen out of orbit and burned up in the atmosphere.

During our last teleconference, the Task Force Tech Nerds reported that the satellite system represented 275- to 300-year-old technology, and over 15 percent of the individual satellites still in orbit had ceased working due to lack of maintenance while others units. After hacking their way into the satellites still under power, they reported every one of the satellites had exhausted their maneuvering thrusters and many of the units had lost varying degrees of their abilities to monitor the surface.

Everyone agreed that those facts gave credence to the Maoris’ assertion that the colonists on Thessaly no longer had the lift capability to boost a vessel or payload from the surface into orbit. Now that the Task Force was in orbit around the planet, another three satellite of their system were found to be adrift from what should be their assigned stations. That further reduced the system’s visual coverage of Thessaly’s surface and upper atmosphere. Those errant satellites also created additional areas on the planet where it would be impossible for any colonists to obtain a radio communication link beyond the horizon, if somebody in those areas had access to the proper radio equipment; which according to our Maori friends, was highly improbable, if not impossible.

The Commander of our Marine assets then reported her people hadn’t detected any radio traffic between the colonists’ ground stations and any of their satellites since we’d made orbit. She went on to say that only when elements of the Task Force began their EDL maneuvers, dropping below the old tech system and landing, could any of the working satellites above our final landing areas be able to provide videos of our vessels. And then only if the proper ground station controlling the over-watch satellites still functioned after all these years. She added that her people, in consultation with our Tech Nerds, believed it was unlikely that any one group on the surface had full access to all the remaining satellites in the system.

After that presentation, Captain Bertram had told us as soon as the first element of the Task Force settled on Thessaly, we would be committed to landing the entire Evacuation Fleet on our chosen landing areas. At that time, Bertram said, we weren’t going to worry about what any satellite might see. If any organized threats did develop, the old tech system could be easily defeated or destroyed to prevent further use. However, Bertram informed us he didn’t want the Task Force to antagonize the colonists by destroying whatever functions their only remaining satellite assets retained before we even made planet-fall.

Now, in my flight seat, I tried to ponder in some logical order all those thoughts fighting for my attention. Then, suddenly, a strong shiver traveled up my spine. Even with the back of my duty blues pushed against the left-hand command seat, the tremors raced up toward my brain, causing the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!

With two blinks of my eye, I brought up the Task Force course projection overlay in the data screen of my Kilo helmet. Another bump of adrenalin hit my system, but nothing like the first, as I saw that in approximately 6.5 minutes our orbit would start taking us over Thessaly, the continent. At that time, our formation would cross above the upper edge of a peninsula that partially enclosed a huge bay located in the northern portion of the eastern coastline. With another blink, the overlay disappeared from in front of my eyes.

Approach scans taken by the Task Force of the planet’s surface indicated the mouth of the Great Eastern River, as the Maori called the mighty watercourse that bisected the continent from south to north, emptied into that bay. Somewhere on the eastern bank of the river our sweet spot would begin.

Once beyond the far northern peninsula and across the huge bay, our orbital path would take the formation along a south-by-southwestern heading that would allow us to comprehensively scan a swath of the land below the Task Force. During this first pass over the continent of Thessaly, only a slice of the lower eastern section of our sweet spot would be revealed. Then we’d continue over part of the huge mountain range that ran east to west at roughly 20 degrees north latitude, and which comprised the majority of the southern coast of Thessaly.

After our formation past over the southern mountain range, where the headwaters of the Great Eastern River began, and then cleared the south coast, the Task Force would cross part of the deep equatorial sea separating Thessaly from the smaller landmass we still called Continent Foxtrot, for lack of local knowledge. The northern coast of Foxtrot began approximately 8 degrees south of the equator and stretched down toward the southern pole.

I grinned at the idea that 66 minutes after crossing over the big bay, the Task Force would be coming back around the planet; beginning our second pass over the continent of Thessaly. However, we’d be coming across the north coast of the landmass a little over a hundred kilometers inland from the eastern ocean, and where a different peninsula curled up and westward, indicating our imposed demarcation between the eastern ocean and the northern arctic sea. With each successive orbit after that, the Task Force would start our pass over Thessaly farther and farther to the west. In that way, our course would reveal more and more of the sweet spot to our eyes and the synchronized scanning arrays of AAS-8, the Royal Yacht, and AAS-9.

When we started our first pass over the big bay, I couldn’t help smile as my excitement grew. I knew our Shuttle Captain, my first wife, had worked to shift our schedules around so she and I would remain in the command seats for at least the next six hours of orbits.

I could tell through my connection with her as time passed that Juliet continued to be thrilled. She was nearly creaming the crotch of her duty blues due to the amounts of high quality data the updated ExoBio scanning suite was returning using the phenomenal sensor arrays in the Royal Yacht combined with those in the AAS-8 and AAS-9. I knew Juliet had programmed her assigned video camera so its vivid video images would support any specific bio-scan return she specified with her own visual evidence.

Her Away Team training guaranteed my first wife had a slew of questions she wanted answered about the flora and fauna we’d find in the sweet spot, and being on the Flight Deck for as long as possible was the beginning of her solution to getting those answers. Even though I couldn’t see her green irises behind the deployed data visor on her Kilo helmet—mine was still down too—I knew her eyes were sparkling with the contained excitement I continued to feel through my connection with her.

It was true that the Maori had already told our contact team there might be other people on the eastern side of the wide water boundary created by the Great Eastern River. Knowing that, it was important to find out through our scans if any of those supposedly nonexistent people were located within the boundaries of our sweet spot. The Task Force commander, Captain Bertram, let everyone know during our last teleconference that we needed to pick a landing area devoid of any indigenous people if at all possible.

Developing peaceful relationships with as many of our new neighbors as we could without compromising the security of all our people was our goal. So it was important that we not displace any natives nor keep them from accessing any traditional hunting grounds, if at all possible, in picking our intended landing zone and the surrounding territory we’d call home. However, Captain Bertram told us that once our territory was established, we would defend our people and our new home with the full power of our combined Marine and ExServ assets if necessary.

Previously the Maori had informed us that if we did find people inhabiting parts of the territories between the Great Eastern River and the eastern coast of the continent, they wanted us to know they had no idea exactly who those individuals might be, or how or when those same people came to be there. During one of the earlier Task Force teleconferences, everyone present agreed what the Maori told us was no real explanation, and we all figured the Maori were intentionally holding back information for reasons of their own. The consensus was that eventually we would find out whatever facts they didn’t want to reveal.

From my talking with Juliet between each of the teleconferences, I knew she strongly felt there was some secret the Maori were trying to hide, and she was determined to eventually solve that lack of forthcoming intelligence. She’d all but promised me that she’d discover the mysterious origins of anyone found on what my first wife now referred to as our side of the big river—even if at some later date she eventually had to resort to DNA sampling for comparison with known populations on the planet.

We both agreed with RY’s assessment that the combined scanning capabilities of the Task Force would locate any person in the territories from the eastern coast of the continent, across the river boundary, and to the Purple Mountains, wherever they might be. Right before our first orbital pass over the continent of Thessaly, Juliet had told me she’d already programmed an alarm into the scanning suite that would sound at the first detection of Homo sapiens in the bio data returns.

Up to this point in our orbital passes we’d been finding different sized concentrations of people around the planet as the Task Force mapped the terrain and oceans below. While we might not find many individuals on the eastern side of the big river, despite what the Maori would not say about them, we certainly expected to find large distributions of people on west side of the Purple Mountains along that coast. That was where the original colonist had landed and started settlements according to the Maori, and the present colonists’ ancestors had spread out from there.

The territory between the great river and the eastern slopes of the Purple Mountains, which the Maori said were held by the mysterious Tribes, would divulged its population secrets to our sensors as well. The Tribes were another population our friendly Maori hadn’t begun to explain to our satisfaction either.

People known and unknown aside, the flora and fauna our sensors had mapped so far on our passes around the planet were demonstrating one truth we had learned from the Maori. And that fact was Thessaly did exhibit a ratio of 78 percent Earth-known flora and fauna to 22 percent indigenous flora and fauna. According to Juliet, the fairly comprehensive list of previously unknown flora and fauna we’d been provided by the Maori was proving to be a great help.

My paranoid ass-wipe sighed down in my lizard brain, thinking that this fact would be just another argument the Pro-Seeders faction among the members of the Task Force would bring up during the next teleconference.

Below us on our south-southwestward track, the forward boundary of the combined sensor array patterns beaming from AAS-8, the Royal Yacht, and AAS-9 continued advancing over the foothills rising from the lowlands as we gradually angled away from the eastern coast of Thessaly. I’d been watching the magnified view on the big monitor in front of the right-side command seat where I sat for awhile. Now the hi-def picture showed mostly those undulating hills covered with green forest canopies brightening in the early morning sunlight. From time to time long dark shadows were cast from ridgelines into the valleys to the west as this part of Thessaly woke up to a new day.

Occasionally light patches of clouds in the atmosphere far below us would momentarily obscure or altogether hide the view I was watching in the monitor where I’d directed my video feed. If I’d wanted, I easily could’ve programmed the real-time display I was watching so the combined sensor information would defeat any intervening cloud clutter, but I hadn’t. The intermittent cloud layers gave me a better sense of scale and reality.

Each time my view of the ground was blocked, my inner geek again reminded me that what I was watching was real and not one of the vividly lifelike video projections RY produced during my training simulations in XL-5, while the craft remained tied-down in the Cargo Hold in line with the other two vehicles. Then my inner geek let out a little giggle, dreaming about our upcoming solo flight in my XL-5 once we landed on Thessaly. A successful solo flight—and of course I’d pass with flying colors—would stamp my pilot ticket for that craft and also be my check out flight in the fantastic little vehicle.

With a shake of my Kilo helmet to bring my thinking back to the here and now, I focused on the center hi-def monitor in front of the co-pilot seat. Even with over 50 percent of the planet’s surface mapped—and I’d watched the video feeds of the Thessaly’s surface through as many of our orbits as I could—the resolution of the optical equipment built into the sensor array of the Royal Yacht still amazed me. Whenever I saw something interesting on my primary monitor through my deployed data visor, with just a blink or two of my eye I could place a start-record-here marker in the video frame. With another eye blink, I’d pull down the zoom command from the menu bar and my latest excellent code-monkey hack would start recording the clip. I could pause the hi-def video feed as well while still recording the video segment to the bubble memory inside my helmet to watch later or replay on a smaller window in the corner of the heads-up display viewing area inside my data visor. I’d also set up the routine to duplicate the recording in several video folders I’d created on two of the Royal Yacht’s huge bubble memories.

Employing this newish hack feature, I’d been able to look down for a second time on a good-sized herd of big elk-like animals moving among the tall grasses as the animals made their stately way through one of the foothill glens we’d overflown earlier. I concentrated on the wide monitor screen, noting the backs of the calves were the length of my thumbnail held out at arm’s length and the view wasn’t even set close to the highest magnification level!

During one of our first shuttle orientation tours, RY had told us that by using the Royal Yacht’s video scanners from orbit, we’d easily be able to read the small print found on the last pages of a questionable purchase contract written by any lawyer on the surface of the planet Shylock. When Anika burst out laughing, RY went on to tell our group that at full zoom, we’d even be able to tell the color of the smallest ants crawling on the legal paper as the merchant tried to hide the words from his buyer by standing on the thick document. I didn’t know where the planet Shylock was located or anything else about it, but knowing my Polka Fireball’s disdain for most merchants and her response to the reference, my second wife must be familiar with the place.

Now, watching a replay of all that fresh meat on the hoof down on Thessaly’s surface, my paranoid ass-wipe wondered if I’d ever have the chance to go hunting to put food on the table for my household. That is, before the Federation rescue force arrived. What with all the farming it seemed my household was facing once the Royal Yacht finally made landfall, I didn’t see how I’d be able to do something fun.

And then my PAW bet, that in the name of efficiency, the powers that be would organize a semi-permanent group, probably from our Marine contingent, to do all the hunting. I hope he was wrong about that.

According to a briefing during our second teleconference, I’d learned the Task Force alone had enough protein synthesizers to manufacture the nutritional needs of the entire crew of the Glenndeavor for 14 months Fleet time if need be while using only the emergency stocks of concentrates brought away from the Glenndeavor before the impact. I was certain that under the direction of Doctor Arrbra Die Florrie, at least the crews of our two shuttles would soon be enjoying fresh produce during the next growing season as well. However, as a boy camping nearly every weekend with my family, I found something satisfying at a deeply instinctual level whenever I ate whatever real meat I’d contributed to a family meal. I knew the crewmembers of the Glenndeavor held different standards concerning what types of proteins they would consume; be it synth or from a living animal, and those decisions were based on each person’s own moral, ethical, societal, or religious beliefs.

Personally, I liked my meat rare in most cases, and in other situations, falling off the bone.

With another shake of my Kilo-helmeted head, I then gave a quick eye focus and blink, toggling the zoom value back to my base setting and returning my assigned video feed to wide focus so I could enjoy the scenery. The image of the big herd, heading southwest, was immediately replaced by the updated live feed. While the Task Force formation continued along our orbital path, my mouth came open! My mind registered a half-a-kilometer deep and perhaps 12-kilometers long stone gorge cutting down through the plateau far below us. The surrounding land was covered with pine forest. My inner geek was happy with the fact that—again—if I wanted to look at the video clip of that herd some other time, a copy of the file was stored in my personal account folder saved in several memory locations, including temporarily inside my Kilo helmet.

At that reoccurring thought, I found myself grin. As any good code-monkey, I knew that redundancy was, truth told, the only security against data loss. But I’d still be able to get a good night’s sleep even though we didn’t have any other memory cores on at least two other vessels in the Task Force devoted to backup the Royal Yacht’s files. I’d let my inner geek worry over that possible flaw in our system. Going though basic training, I discovered that I could sleep easy even while my inner geek paced around in my lizard brain trying to come up with a workable solution for whatever problem was nagging him.

With the impressive gorge behind us, now the wide hi-def screen was showing me the last few kilometers of foothills as the land below transitioned to another higher, broad plateau. This area was covered in grasslands and conifer forests. It was easier for me to see two different herds of four-legged animals in this terrain, which my secondary monitor showed as covering several hundred square kilometers. One huge, stationary herd near a good-sized river, which produced a spectacular looking waterfalls as the flow tumbled over the edge of the tableland, looked to be bison and reminded me of stories about the early North American natives on old Earth. With a continuing happy grin, I glanced at a group of informational windows displayed in the HD screen off to my right. I saw our orbit path had the Task Force moving on a not quite parallel course with the coast of the eastern ocean, which was now over 400 kilometers off to our left and outside our sensor scan area.

Twee-twee-twee, a warning sounded not only in my earbud under my Kilo helmet, but also from the audio emitters on the Flight Deck as a poker-chip sized yellow circle in the top right corner of my secondary HD screen just to my right began flashing brightly in time the sensor alarm!

“Oh ... my ... goodness,” I heard Juliet’s voice coming from under her Kilo helmet and data visor; her uttered words breaking the absolute quiet gripping the Flight Deck before she leaned slightly forward in the command seat to my left.

Her voice sounded just as astonished through my right earbud as I was feeling! Coming out of the thrall produced by what I’d been witnessing, I looked away from the small section of mountainous southern coast now displayed on my main view monitor. While our course was about to take the formation out over the Equatorial Sea, I had no interest in the panorama passing below. Instead, after almost being completely overwhelmed, I was trying to regain my composure!

Suddenly, I fought the urge to burst out laughing! Part of me felt as if I’d just seen a string of scenes from one of the films in my Old Earth movie library come to life down on the planet’s surface. One of those movies was a well-done color film that supposedly depicted the last warrior from a certain Native American tribe!

Of course, all the camera angles covering the people I’d been observing down below were wrong; my view came from cameras angled downward. But I still saw six different groups of individuals dressed and acting like several of the real, live Native American tribes portrayed in some of those epic stories in my media files! My inner geek wondered if the people down below were from the Tribes that the Maori told us about, and who’d found their way to the eastern side of the great river? While it might take a while to paddle across, the ancestors of the people I’d just seen could have done so in even the most primitive canoes.

Next to me, my shuttle-commander and first-wife, was obviously studying two slowly scrolling text readouts she’d brought up in her forward monitor. The data screen on her helmet rotated up from in front of her face. She gestured toward the monitor with her right hand and announced in a soft but firm voice while giving me a quick look by just shifting her green eyes my way, “According to these bioscans, Jameson, as well as the visual evidence we all saw, there certainly are a lot more people on eastern side of the Maoris’ Great Eastern River than they led us to believe. And we’ve only scanned a slice of that entire area so far.”

The rest of the crewmembers presently on the Flight Deck were lost in their own thoughts and reacting to what we’d seen during the minutes of our third pass over the continent Thessaly. I could hear my breathing and realized my heart had been racing with excitement. The big, wide monitor in front of the left-hand command couch where I sat was now showing a replay of a 150-kilometer wide swath of the southern coast of Thessaly.

Just moments ago my inner geek had easily taken over my muscles and blinked my eye three times, pulling down a series of commands from the menu bar displayed along the top of my data visor. That part of me watched the late morning sunlight that illuminated the partial view of the majestic east-west mountain range along the southern coast of Thessaly that had been below the Royal Yacht. At this magnification, the replay of the recorded video feed continued showing the jagged mountains descending to the deep blue ocean waters south-southwest along the path of our orbit. Part of me noticed only two sheltered bays along the section of rocky coastline spread out in front of my eyes on the wide forward monitor. The sight reminded me of the Nuevos Andes coastline on my home world— Alphacron Prime.

With a shake of my Kilo-covered head, I admitted to my inner geek and my paranoid ass-wipe that everything I’d seen had me gobsmacked. If I didn’t have control of the video feed I was watching, or didn’t have the ability to bring up instant replays starting back at any of the time markers I’d blink to attach to what I’d watched at various moments, my astonishment at what I’d witnessed would have caused me to miss so many other significant views that passed by in real time.

But, right now, my inner geek was wondering how cold the deep blue equatorial ocean down there was this time of year. He wanted to take control of my eyes again and blink through the menu bar on the inside of the data visor a second time. But all the new information my mind was trying to assimilate right now prevented him from taking control and targeting a part of the ocean for a temperature return while maybe bringing up an overlay showing fish populations below the surface of all that blue water as well. I did know from the last data readout I’d noticed that the temperature of the air was 28.8889 degrees Celsius up to 4 meters above the small sandy beach that was part of the larger bay I last looked at.