Jen Marshall, descendant of a long-line of space-faring captains and admirals and explorers, gaped as Captain Baxter brought her up to speed. Her thoughts on the mission grew more pessimistic with each passing second.
Chief engineer on a rust-bucket orbiting some useless
planet in a useless solar system. Orisa would be pleased to know her
great-great-great-whatever granddaughter is so successful...
Truth be told, the Garibaldi was not a terrible ship to
crew on. It would have been top of the line tech 50 years ago and runs better
than any ship the average civilian would have, but is on the low end for
gunslingers. Of note, the ship systems were severely outdated when they had
departed from Terra Duomo. Jen’s first move as chief engineer, to much reproach
and backlash, was directing her software engineers to re-code all systems up to
current standards, optimized for efficiency and precision. Almost half a year
later, at least their software was modernized. Thankfully for their current
predicament, the interface integrating radar ladar detection and ship maneuverability
with automatic path projection was working well. Starting to look like that
was worth the headache.
“Now that we have Ezra’s blip-detecting algorithm shit I
want to see the surface of that planet,” said Jake Baxter. “Jen, we are going
to need to first maneuver one of the last few probes down through that fog and
see what we see. Following that, the Garibaldi.”
“That won’t be easy ca…”
“Ya well I don’t care. We need it done. Otherwise we will
both grow old in this lonely system, and its’ star will supernova, and we will
have no Solarsphere to travel home along. I know you want to get home to Po and
the kids.”
“I’ll get on it,” was what she said. Ridiculous and dramatic,
if that star went supernova the Garibaldi and Tectonia would be long dead, she
didn’t say.
***
Past the operations control room, crew decks, galley,
observatory and general lab space, was Jen’s realm of the ship. Engineering, machine
shop, cargo bay and last but not least, the computer labs: the mainframe domain
as her and her fellow engineers endearingly referred to it. First, she made her
way to the cargo bay. Three probes remaining. Not a lot of wiggle room… Price
of repetitive failures.
Next stop was in the machine shop. Jen roused four of her
mechanics to reinforce the outer shielding of the probes with extra carbon
plating. The probes were well rated for normal atmospheric entry as is. However, they
would need extra heat-shielding, necessary for the sustained high rates of
volcanic activity predicted to be present on the planetary surface. Finally,
she floated to the mainframe domain to get the scopes and systems running
and await mission start. Jen’s software engineers were logged in, headphones
blaring a mix of void rap out of Terra Duomo, Jovian jazz popular
in the moons of Jupiter, and 20th century classical rock. They
did not notice her come in, but she saw they were testing the image acquisition
and deconvolution software as she had requested. Enough to see through the facade
of Tectonia, assuming the fog is thinner at the surface. A few hours
later, with Jen well into her second straight shift, probe #1 was ready to descend
onto Tectonia.
***
The mainframe domain was packed and ringing with a din
of nervous chatter and over-worked air recyclers. Her software engineers typed away
at touchscreen terminals, tweaking the probe’s path algorithms to fit the new
predictions of blips in the cloud covering. A thickness in the air smothered inwards
on Jen’s salience and she became unable to ignore the stench of sweat emanating
from Ezra, the stale coffee in Jake’s breath and Alexis’ normally subtle scent
of her peanut stash. A fog breaking the facade of their hidden lives. A fog not
unlike the one on Tectonia, but this one composed of human livelihood, interaction,
and desperation.
I really need to get those air recyclers tuned up.
“And here we go!” said Ezra, jittery and over-excited. Lost
in thought, Jen had missed the probe launch.
“First readings look on point,” said Alexis as she compared
the Garibaldi’s sensory data from the observatory with the probe’s. “Probe
#1 is approaching atmosphere now. The area of sky underneath is currently in a fog
cover with high levels of nitrogen and sulfur, low oxygen.”
“My plate tectonics algorithm predicts a clearing will form
in approximately 30 seconds, and last for under a minute,” said Ezra. “With
your path-projection software, Chief Marshall, we should hit that window
perfectly.” Jen nodded her thanks as the fog covering under probe #1 in Tectonia’s
atmosphere began to clear.
“Wow! Gas composition data in the blip is coming in,” said
Alexis. “Unlike our previous predictions, Tectonia does have oxygen
levels within the life range, they are just present when the fog has cleared: 19%
oxygen, 83% nitrogen, smaller concentrations of carbon dioxide, ozone and sulfur.”
“Quiet, quiet. The probe,” said Jake, gesturing towards the screen
with the probe’s outer camera feed. The first glimpse of the surface was
beautiful. Jen had seen a lot of worlds throughout her lifetime. Be it in her
media feeds, her elementary classes or even in the rare opportunity for a
planetary stroll. It never got old. Whether it was coded in her genetics, or nurtured
in through generation-spanning stories, the blood of an explorer coursed
through Jen’s veins, just like it had for Orisa travelling the Solarsphere all
those years ago. Awe out-competed stress and exhaustion on Jen’s face,
twinkling her eyes, widening her grin and loosening the wrinkles in her
forehead.
Tectonia was beautiful… until it wasn’t.
The landscape was riveting. Directly below probe #1, as Dr.
Ezra Alexander had predicted, was a deep trench in the crust of the alien
planet. A liquid resembling water rapidly coursed out of the lithosphere, waves
crashing and filling the crater. The probe descended enough to sample the liquid
from a high wave, confirming it as H2O. Dr. Alexis Athena, in contact with her
team on the observatory decks, tuned the probe’s feeds sideways towards the relatively
thinner fog; cameras looking north, south, east and west, from the subduction zone.
Video data coming into the mainframe domain was fed through the image deconvolution
pipeline, pulling what visual data of Tectonia’s surface they could
through the wall of volcanic smoke and fog.
Surrounding the lithosphere trench, tall waves of lava mixed
with water, generating rock and land and stalagmite-like formations reaching
for the sky. Terra firma in flux. An equilibrium of liquid and solid,
heat and cold, fire and ice, evoking an innate, intrinsic fear of a prehistoric Earth.
Farther along, seas of lava gave way to twisted, enormous volcanoes and back, a
weave of crimson and gray extending endlessly towards the horizon.
“The fog is thinner here, near the surface. Unlike when we tried to descend
through it, with the additional heat-shielding this probe will survive when the
plates shift and the blip closes,” said Jen. “Which is when, Ezra?”
“Not much longer,” he replied. “Under 30 seconds now.”
Then the birds came and the probe died. It was easy to call
them birds, but in truth even in the initial readings these creatures only
shared wings and flight with their Earth-born comparators. Probe #1 only
caught a few seconds of video, massive beasts with 30 foot wingspans, what
appeared to be a breathing orifice on the underbelly of the main torso, and antenna-like
limbs emerging from the tops of the wings. Wings enveloped the probe from all
sides, eclipsing the camera feeds for a few seconds before the data stream
stopped permanently.
The air in the mainframe domain was much thicker now.
Fear mingled with the stale air and sweat and remnants of stress snacks.
Captain Baxter was the first to break the silence, as calmly
as he could. “What in the shit was that?”
Image from: https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA01765
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