"So, what are you doing?" asked Ria, climbing back up into Hesperian's Control Room.
"I'm running diagnostics of all the ships systems," Stephen replied, not bothering to look away from his console.
"Is that needed?"
"Probably not," he conceded. "But it helps take my mind off my aching muscles and head. Foxy finished simulating the piggyback ride to Proxima C. She reckons we can do it but there won't be much of a safety margin on fuel. And I don't need to remind you what it means if it doesn't work. It wouldn't be possible at all without the residual fuel in our own tanks."
"You think we can do it?" she asked.
"The way I'm looking at it is this: We're on track with our approach to Proxima B, everything, for us, has gone as planned. The best course of action to protect our crew is to continue as originally planned, follow our practised procedure and land on B. Tying ourselves to our Pathfinder support ship, looping around the planet and shooting off towards Proxima C and attempting to achieve orbit for a second time but with twice as much mass seems an unnecessary risk until we know the Elysian crew need our help."
"You think we should wait for a distress call?"
"All we know is that their vessel was damaged and they have had to deploy their modules early. They may not need our help."
"That seems fair but if they crash on the surface, will they be able to get a message to us?"
"That all depends on how their landing goes. If it goes well, yes, they will but they won't need to. If they end up scattered in a thousand pieces across the surface, no, but they won't need to either."
"Don't say that!" she sighed, then paused for a few seconds. "It's the middle ground that concerns me. If they need our help and we don't act before we deploy ourselves, it might be years before we're in a position to send help."
"And if we endanger our own crew speculatively trying to help theirs, we might all end up dead."
"There's more to this decision," she said. "Proxima C is the better of the two planets. That's why we originally sent three ships there and just us and the Olympian to Proxima B. If both Proxima B vessels redirect to C, the colony there will be back up to three colonisation vessels in total, but we'll have Uranian's and Arcadian's Pathfinder vessels too. We'll end up in a better overall position and we won't need to live underground for half the year!"
"I just don't think it's wise to mess around with a plan that's taken decades to design and implement."
"With two of the five ships not completing the voyage, the plan's already messed-around-with," she retorted.
"What you're suggesting might work but I'd want to know more about what's going on with the other ships before we do anything drastic like that."
"That's reasonable," she conceded. "We've got some time before we arrive at Proxima B, let's see what else we learn in the meantime. We can't do anything before that anyway."
"I'll get back to my diagnostics then," he nodded.
"Foxy, have you heard anything back from Earth on the U.L.R.?"
"Just one reply so far, Commander. Should I display it on the main screen?"
"Yes, please."
Before she had finished speaking, the text of the message appeared on the screen:
Subject: CPV Uranian Status Update
Recipient: Ria Laghari
Sender: Admin Department
Level: General
Dear Commander Laghari,
Info as req.:
11 days prior to launch, a nuclear device was detonated on CPV Uranian. 144 personnel were killed, including 23 members of the Uranian crew. Holy Earth claimed responsibility. Since then the colonisation program has been mothballed & there will be no future launches.
Sorry, Earth is no longer able to support you.
Good luck,
Robert Francis – ONM.
Program Controller.
"That's insane!" Ria exclaimed.
"What part?" asked Stephen.
"All of it! More than a quarter of their crew killed. That's terrible. The others must have been technicians and engineers on the Exodus station. I hope the station survived."
"All awful," he nodded, "But I'm more worried about the program being mothballed. There were supposed to be three fleets of ships and more supplies on the way. It going to be tough without those. It leaves us with a massive shortage of personnel, skills and materials."
"I'm not even going to think about that now. Do you fancy a coffee?" she asked.
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Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)
Science FictionThree Spacecraft, two-hundred-and-forty colonists, twenty-five trillion miles and a discovery that changes everything. "Astronomicon: Inception Point" follows the human race's intrepid first steps into interstellar space, a colonisation mission to P...
