First Contact, Part One
It was already ten in the morning. Ben and Aldridge were at their usual boy investigations. At nine years old, their interests were not on the aesthetic but on the pragmatic. The two of them were gingerly climbing up the deck stairs at the Pacific seaside condo building. One held a grimaced expression as he carried a vaguely green and brown duck by its graying webbed feet. Its head lolled to one side in a death dance. The other boy carried a grouper fish but held it between two sticks. Aldridge was squinting his eyes trying not to breathe yet grinning eagerly. Another family passed on the stairs heading in the opposite direction. The mother pulled her little boy to the far side of the stairs to let the parade pass while her son gazed longingly at the other two boys and their treasures.
Grace smiled. She didn’t know the boys personally even though she lived in the condo next to theirs, the one with the uninterrupted view of the ocean. She enjoyed watching them. Such small pleasures they enjoyed. It helped lift the weight of the world off her shoulders. They made her feel a part of reality. They grounded her in a sense of the mundane. Made her understand viscerally why she had chosen to risk her life to protect this planet. Medical had cleared her for a return to service just like her starship had been cleared for its next exploration.
Deeper than admiration, she loved her ship. Black and sleek like a starless midnight, it blended into space especially when the running lights were off, and why wouldn’t they be in deep space. Not everything there was friendly to human life. Longer than a basketball court, the ship was massive on the ground but tiny in the vastness of space. Its graphene surface absorbed ambient light from the universe like a solar panel did planet side, transforming light into energy. Its triangular design glided through space like a well-trimmed sail on the sea. Here one moment and in a different place within a heartbeat due to its jump drive that folded space/time. This was a particularly difficult equation to develop as the ship traveled faster than light speed. One wanted to come out of the fold at the intended location. Grace was one of the few who could perform such calculations in the moment.
Slipping off her sweats, Grace stepped into the shower. It was her one indulgence, even though it had been expensive to install, especially with the water reclaimer which allowed her to shower for more than ten minutes at a time. When the soft tendrils of wet heat sluiced off her skin, she felt liquid and the muscles in her back loosened. Her shallow breathing became slower and deeper. When she stepped out, she hopped on the scale. Precisely one hundred ten pounds. Her body muscled like a gymnast’s making it easier to exercise in space. All she needed to keep her five-foot-eight-inch frame toned in deep space was a jumping rope and a mat, at least while the gravity system was engaged. Grace towel dried her regulation short hair, naturally wavy and golden-brown. If she wasn’t smiling, at least she relaxed. She could be without the fear for a moment. Dabbing moisturizer on her face, she felt the smoothness of it, her hazel eyes sparkled, her full lips smiling at the idea of returning to her beloved ship and the adrenaline rush of exploring an unknown universe.
But there it was again, as soon as she relaxed her guard. The fear of knowing and the paradox of wanting, more than anything, to know the truth. It propelled her forward the whole time her mind was scratching and clawing to stay safely where she was. Well, she would go tomorrow. Dream or no. She had been recovering from a near fatal explosion for the past six months, and the dreams were becoming more frequent. Time to know. Time to go. Time to learn what had happened. More importantly, time to learn what had captured her and later returned her to the ship so changed.
Pulling on the black jumpsuit with the triple golden-striped sleeves, she tapped her Comm unit, her unique DNA accessing the software. Her Commander appeared on the screen backlit by the halogen haze of the command module. “Archer, status report.”
Archer stood military straight, his black uniform hugged a fit six-foot two-inch frame, not an ounce of fat on muscle. Black hair cut high and tight, cappuccino skin complementing his uniform. He spoke without smiling. “Repairs completed. All systems go. The Reliance is ready, Captain.”
“Excellent, Commander. We leave at 0800 Standard Earth Time, tomorrow.”
When she signed off, Grace’s hands were shaking as she recalled clearly when it had all gone sour on her ship. The Reliance had shut down the jump drive a quarter of an AU outside of the home solar system. For the next week, slowing down at sub light speed, the crew felt uneasy, especially Grace who could feel someone standing behind her breathing down her neck, fingernails closer to her shoulders, yet no one could see anyone there. Then as the crew adjusted course trajectory to bring the ship into earth orbit, the air around Grace shimmered and she vanished. She remembered isolated bits and pieces from that time even though psychiatrists specializing in deep space issues worked diligently with her to uncover any memories. Vaguely and only in a dream like state, she recalled a room, the ceiling open to space. She wondered how that could be as the star formations were unknown to her and she could still breathe even though space did not appear separated by an atmosphere. Her body shivered with fright despite her wonder and curiosity about her surroundings. Around her were sentient beings. How she surmised this, she wasn’t sure since their bodies were amorphous, flowing in and out of differing shapes. Other than that, what happened was a deep mystery to her which both frightened and elated her.
As she learned later, after her disappearance, Commander Archer had reacted with aplomb. Following protocol, he had swept space in ever concentric circles starting at .5 AU optical, chemical, sound. He had then quantified the date, searching for anomalies until he ordered a full stop, not an easy maneuver in space. Simultaneously, he had the ship searched. Although the crew completed all steps with their usual excellence, they uncovered nothing.
Moments later, and without warning, the ship’s drive shut down. Archer barked out an order to Flight Commander Adam as the Reliance rotated starboard, picking up speed as it spun out of control toward Earth’s atmosphere. Flight Commander Archer, who had been tossed out of his seat with the sudden spin of the ship, regained his chair staring with cold focus at the flight panel. With his crew-cut brown hair and pale green eyes, Adam was short, five foot even and lithe, a wiry young man in his late twenties, inexperienced but qualified to command on the bridge of a deep space flight. In moments, he bypassed the drive system to restart the ship while the deck pitched again, torquing to starboard in an ever-tighter vortex picking up speed as it spun toward the gravity of earth’s atmosphere. Lights flashed off, briefly immersing the bridge in darkness until the emergency system came on. It bathed the deck in soft blue. Archer scanned the lights reflecting off the pallor of skin that had been in space too long, away from a natural light source.
“Rig for impact,” Archer spluttered out. Ship wide, the entire crew of seventy-five specialists teetered into their hammocks and pulled the fine mesh living cables around themselves for protection. Archer sank into his own hammock bracing for the inevitable crush of a 10-gee crash. The ship pitched and yawed wildly as it spun through space. The moment of impact was 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then …
TO BE CONTINUED…
