Exodus (The Exodus Trilogy) (16 page)

It had been more than a century since the Exodus left Earth with its more than sixteen hundred inhabitants, but decades still remained. Kenneth Taylor had been awake for almost a year now, and still had more than a year left until he was to be put back to Sleep. He had worried about the possible danger of multiple Sleep cycles, but
studying Tina Hammer’s report from her investigation a century ago had reassured him that the only effects were the possible psychological trauma experienced during the waking process. And several scientists were working on designing a better way. As one scientist would finish part of the research necessary, another would pick up when the first went back to Sleep. Kenneth was one of those, and his main propositions for those who followed would be to create an environment that made the subjects feel like they were waking up in the morning, from natural sleep. Others would research the possibility of using a cocktail of various drugs to induce a feeling of well-being, postponing consciousness until the worst physical effects had subsided, and so on. Having extensive research experience, he felt they were making better progress than what he was used to from his own career back on Earth. He supposed that was due to the ability to work with very little distraction for a two-year period, and then leave the work for someone else, who would then go at it with a new perspective and new energy. This made everyone work faster individually, as the time limit was fixed. At the same time, the many heads working on the same problem ensured that every angle was covered, which provided a quality rarely found in Earth-based science. As a matter of fact, Kenneth thought they had accidentally discovered an entirely different way of conducting science, which felt deeply satisfying. In a few cycles, the research phase would come to an end, and the engineers and technicians would take over. He was curious as to how they would be able to use the insights gained from all those years of research to tweak the waking process into something better. He shrugged. There was nothing else to do but wait and see how it would be once they reached Aurora.

Even though his task at hand occupied his mind most of the time, there were times when he'd put his research aside, and contemplate something that had bothered him ever since they left
Earth orbit. It would creep up from the back of his mind; a mystery he couldn't seem to solve properly, and once it came over him, he couldn't shake the feeling, even now. Back on Earth there had been a lot of arrests, both before and after launch. So many people had been revealed as having been part of a conspiracy connected to Project Exodus. Even the director, Senator Buchanan, had been one of the conspirators, and rumors had it there might even be conspirators on board. In the early days, there was talk of sabotage, but now that they had travelled so far, he for one didn’t believe that anymore. There had to be something else, but what? And the thing that really made him wonder was the fact that no one, as far as he knew, had been arrested aboard the Exodus. If the director had been involved, surely there had to be someone on the Exodus itself.

Having mused over
the possibilities during this past year, privately, of course, since such matters weren’t discussed openly, he had come to his own conclusion that there was no plan to disrupt or sabotage anything. What purpose would be served at this point? But his presence on the ship was puzzling. In Andrews’s America, he wouldn’t normally have stood a chance of being among the few selected for such a journey as this. Even though he’d never been vocal when it came to his political views, in a society governed by the fear of real and imagined enemies, he knew it was naïve to think that he’d escaped being monitored by the ever-present eyes and ears of the government. And, that being the case, why would someone with views contrary to the current administration’s be selected? The only possible answer he could envision was that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that critical voices and dissidents were allowed on board. The goal of that might actually be to make sure the values and principles that had been gradually torn apart after Mars and Seattle would be brought back to life on the new world. That would surely have meant that even more people in the security services, the FBI, and the project had to be involved. And it definitely had to mean that someone close to Havelar, who had been appointed by the president to become acting governor as soon as they established themselves on Aurora, would have to be involved too, in order to divert attention from such people even after the starship left Earth. But who? It was impossible to know for sure. Besides, he had already decided to leave these things be for the time being. After all, if he was right, someone was protecting him and others, to make sure they made it safely to the new world. And what if he did discover who that someone was? If he dug too deeply into this, he might end up helping those who would rather see the new world populated with obedient conformists; to build a world in the image of Havelar and Andrews. No, he would keep his thoughts to himself. He would do as he’d done for so many years back on Earth; observe and keep his mouth shut.

The alarm sounded throughout the ship, loud enough to hear, but not so loud that people would be unable to focus or concentrate on their immediate tasks. Kenneth Taylor started as he heard the sound, and immediately left the lounge compartment where he’d been relaxing after having too large
a dinner with a couple of the others. He quickly ran over to the console by the door and saw that this was something he should stay out of. There were already technicians working on the problem, and although the maintenance bots were capable of dealing with all sorts of situations, he felt more reassured knowing there were actual humans around who had the insight and knowledge to handle this.

The door closed automatically as he stood there; a safety precaution in case of a hull breach. That way, if they lost one compartment the others would hold, and losses would be minimized. He sat down again, took out his
tablet, and logged on to the open comms channel, where he could follow the crisis as it unfolded. In deep space there was very little that could interfere with the starship, but one of the things they had occasionally seen were meteors. He had no idea where they came from, or whether they orbited some distant star or were rogues such as the planet that had hit Mars. But they were out there, and in this instance, it seemed the ship had come too close to a meteor tail, where microscopic pieces of debris had hit the ship. Although the pieces were small, the speed of both the comet and the Exodus meant they hit with tremendous force, causing damages much larger than their size would imply. According to one of the technicians, speaking rapidly as she checked the status of each and every compartment, there were two breached hulls, the thing they feared the most. The lesser damages would be taken care of by the bots, with no need for human intervention. However, there was a fist-sized hole in the stowed magnetic sail, which would require one of the human technicians to inspect it before deciding what to do with it. Normally that would be an easy fix by the bots, but there was a danger of damaging the sail even more, so a human would have to make a decision whether to leave it as it was or to attempt a repair.

Kenneth listened intently as he followed the progress of the men and women working the problem, and as helpless as he was, locked in his sealed compartment with no way to be of any assistance, he knew the technicians were capable and resourceful. H
alf an hour later, one of them was space walking outside, tethered to the ship by a long wire. He had to get past several cargo compartments before he could access the shield behind which the magnetic sail was stowed. But just as he located the hole, the wire that tethered him got stuck. He could see that the hole was bigger than they had thought, and that it needed immediate repair, otherwise it would widen and the entire sail would be jeopardized. Without the magnetic sail, the ship would be unable to decelerate enough to enter Aurora orbit, and they risked overshooting the planet, with no way to turn the starship around. The technician discussed it with the on-board team for maybe a minute, and it was decided he had to perform a manual repair as soon as possible. Indeed, this was a perilous situation, made more so because the technician had to unhook himself from the tether in order to reach and repair the hole. He had to be sure to maintain physical contact with the ship at all times, or risk being adrift in space with no hope of rescue. There would be no second chances, should he slip or lose his grip. Kenneth's eyes were fixed on his screen, watching the technician slowly and very carefully proceed, creeping along the ship’s hull toward the hole. When he reached it, he immediately started repairing the damage with spares he’d carried along in a bag fixed to his EVA suit.

“
All right, it’s done. Returning to airlock,” Kenneth heard the technician say. He let out a relieved breath. The danger was passed, and unless there were more incidents like this one, they should be safe until they reached Aurora. Just as he was about to put his tablet away, he heard loud, excited voices on the speaker, and he looked at his tablet again. It seemed the technician had forgotten to latch onto the wire again, and had slipped as he was creeping along the hull toward the airlock. Now he was floating away from the ship, and fast.

“
We’ll get you, Vinnie. Just hang on,” he heard someone say. There was a moment of silence, before he heard the technician, Vinnie, again.

“
Forget it, guys. You won’t get to me in time. I’m already a hundred meters out. In thirty seconds, it’ll be more than two hundred. It’s going too fast. I don’t want you to risk it.” Kenneth thought he understood what Vinnie was talking about. He was caught up in an outward motion and gaining speed. There was no way that the others would get a wire to him, simply because the wire would soon be moving slower than he was. He was lost, and he knew it. The amazing thing was that he was so calm about it, Kenneth thought. He wondered whether it was heroism or fatalism. But whatever it was, somehow, in a bizarre way, he thought the dying man’s acceptance of his fate was admirable.

Secured
to the outside of one of the cargo compartments, there were four large containers. They were insulated and deftly hidden from anyone inspecting the ship, either manually or using the bots. A decade ago, there had been an incident, in which one man had died, where the starship had gotten too close to a meteor tail. The hole that the now-deceased technician had repaired had been on the outer layer of the forward compartment, where the magnetic sail was stowed. The four containers were located right behind where the hole had been, and the technician had actually been crawling across them, without noticing the oddness of having containers secured to the outside, instead of having them safely stowed within the ordinary cargo containers. Thomas Dunn shook his head at the thought. Of course, the technician had probably been too busy to notice, or too busy to report the thing. Whatever the reason, the containers remained hidden.

Besides being out of sight, the containers officially weren’t even on board. They were nowhere to be found on
the cargo manifest, and just a few people knew they were even there. Even fewer knew what they contained. Even Thomas, having been part of smuggling them on board, didn’t know exactly what they held, but he could think of a few things, and none of them were pleasant. His primary suspicion was that they held weapons. There were weapons on board, of course. No one knew what to expect once they reached Aurora, but if there was some sort of animal life there, the weapons might be necessary, both for protection and for hunting. But Thomas suspected the containers held far worse weapons than rifles and handguns. If Havelar and his cronies were to establish their domain, they would need a sufficient armory, and back on Earth there was a range of weapons that would be able to perform such a role. So, although there might be other possibilities, weapons were what he thought most likely.

He knew the area where the containers were hidden well, because he’d been out there once before, just a few days ago. He had been nervous, knowing that one wrong step would result in
the same fate that had befallen the poor technician. But he’d done what he intended to, and got safely back without anyone noticing. And now he had a tracker placed on each of the containers, which would allow him to know exactly where they landed, once they were safely down on Aurora. Even if Havelar managed to put them all safely down, there would be a slight chance that one of them could be stolen away. He didn’t yet know how, but as always, he prepared to improvise. It had worked well so far.

Admiral Greg Hamilton stood on the bridge of the Exodus and looked out at the stars. 55 Cancri was
far off in the distance, barely visible to the naked eye, and in just a few months, they would start waking the rest of the crew and passengers. At the moment, close to fifty people were awake, and although there was a mood of relief and joy as the journey seemed to draw to a close, most of those awake right now were just too busy to really savor these moments. For the last fifteen years, the magnetic sails had been deployed, and were giving the ship the necessary deceleration to be able to enter an orbit around Aurora. So far everything had gone according to plan, and Hamilton was relieved that no sudden malfunctions had occurred. After all, more than a century and a half had passed since they left Earth, so many things could have happened in that time. There had been the slingshots, which had put an enormous strain on the structure of the Exodus, the journey through the Oort Cloud, littered with comets and debris, a nerve-racking experience for those awake at the time, the encounter with a comet that cost the life of a brave technician, and other less costly incidents.

The next hurdle would be to find a stable orbit, and then of course the descent to the planet. They had
gathered much more data on the planet itself during the course of the journey, although many questions still remained, such as what forms of life it contained. But there were more and more data coming in as to temperature and atmospheric conditions, and so far everything looked good, and the planet still looked habitable, although it was far too early to tell whether Aurora had a breathable atmosphere. There were so many other factors that were important about the atmosphere, and whether it was breathable was something that couldn’t be fully determined until they were on the ground. Even if the composition was just right, they would have to determine whether it contained trace elements that could be harmful, or dangerous bacteria or spores, and a lot of other airborne elements that could only be detected up close.

Greg Hamilton had reason to be a happy man, but still he worried. Although there
was still a lot to be done before they were safely in orbit, and even more before they were able to walk on their new home world, those challenges were not what worried him. The thing that concerned him was what kind of life they would create for themselves, once the bare necessities of survival were overcome. He knew that George Havelar had been appointed governor by the president, back in the twenty-first century, but he also knew that a lot of people questioned what kind of authority a president—long dead, on a world probably just as dead—had to give any sort of directions. He also knew that Havelar, although an assertive and powerful man, did have enemies. Not personally, as far as he knew, but as the representative of a system that had turned oppressive and inhuman in its last decades. And he felt torn. A military man to the core, Hamilton knew how important it was to have a chain of command when going into unknown territory. Who knew what dangers and obstacles they’d encounter? So having a set leadership from the start was important, and could prove the difference between a mission accomplished and an utter failure, which in this case could prove lethal, not just to the ones involved, but for an entire species. On the other hand, he’d never been comfortable with the way things had developed back on Earth, and although for the most part, he’d been a world apart from everything that had happened back home, he’d seen what had happened to civilian society. So perhaps it would have been better to start over from scratch, and have an elected leadership even before first landing. But the difficulty with that was that there were no good alternatives; no one to challenge Havelar and his Consortium allies. It was analogue to the situation in America when they left. In a one-party system, there could be no well-known, effective opposition, and that was also the case here. So in the end, they would have to go with the old system and its workings, until something else could grow to actually challenge the established system. He only hoped the transition would be smooth. What he feared the most was that Havelar and his crew would try to turn him and the rest of the military contingent into tools of oppression. Although he was old and experienced enough to withstand such a course, there would always be someone ready to take his place. And a military background, although very positive in the sense of commitment and ability to carry out dangerous and demanding tasks, always held a propensity for obedience and misunderstood loyalty. Under the proper conditions, that could easily turn them into willing tools of malice.