Beyond Light

The Hawking-616a System.

The three men in charge of the Command Bridge returned to their positions to set a flight course to planet Hawking-616e. 

Mike could have done the work alone by himself, with little assistance from LIBRA and Navigation Officer Liang, but John wanted the three on work to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Any signal that could contain a message or a distress call, or anything out of the ordinary that they could detect would make a difference in their mission. 

And it paid off. Before the Beyond Light took off and her crew left the remains of the Eternity of Return —not without leaving behind a drone team for deeper examination— Xi detected something that only brought more hopes to John: The remains of one of the unidentified ships that attacked the human dreadnought.

However, the Navigations Officer said that not much remained, and the only way he could detect it was through decay radiation that it still emitted. Communications Officer Emmerson could not detect any signals or radio waves coming from them, only static and white noise. 

It was an opportunity they could not miss. But John had a more important task ahead. He sent an EVA team to recover anything they could find. 

He selected Master Sargeant Yuri Novikov to command the mission. There was something on him that drew John’s attention. PFSR people —especially Russians— were often known to be cold, bold, and rather inexpressive, but the man had demonstrated to be an exemption to the rule. Playful and extroverted, he was like the Russian version of Mike, except that much less annoying in some ways.

John greeted him and his team goodbye on the vehicle deposit and then moved again to Doctor Weiber’s Lab on the second deck. He wanted to know as much as he could about Vita Nova. What humanity knew about the system was rather vague, but the INIS doctor and his team had discovered many things in the last few hours.

He and Yui were there when John arrived. Sergeant Major Derek Williams and Supervisor Katiya Ivanovich were there too, reunited at the table’s edge right in front of the entrance, where the doctor liked to seat the most.

“But that’s what I am saying," the old man spoke. "Ad Infinitum was a hoax, a political device. Nothing else. Proxima Centauri was a much more convenient and affordable objective, with planets as interesting as those in here. Oh, hello, Commander.”

John greeted everyone with a casual salute. “Hi there, everyone. Our trip is gonna be a lengthy one.” 

“It will give us time to study this system some more,” said Doctor Weiber. “but I see that you military people are short in patience. Like me, sometimes.”

“Hi there, Cap,” greeted Derek. “Is Yuri and his team ready to go?”

“They’ve already left. I wanted to send you with them but I’m going to need you with us once on the planet,” he took a seat and joined their chat.

“Would have liked to spend more time with that kid,” said Derek. “Has lots to learn. Reminds me of me when young. To think I would say that about a feddie, right?” he chuckled. “No offense, Katiya. That’s how we talk about each other on our side.”

The blonde woman squeezed her lips but kept writing on her portable computer. “What are you working on?” asked John, trying to sound friendly. He felt the hunch that he would never get Diaz off his nerves, but having both supervisors against him was something he didn’t want. 

She raised her alluring blue eyes at him for a second, only to return them down to her screen, and speak on her soft yet Slavic accent. “I’m writing a report, Commander. It’s my duty to generate a chronological summary for the PFSR of everything we find.” 

“...Does that include casual chitchats?” asked Derek. 

“No,” she continued typing. 

Doctor Weiber then spoke, as the woman didn’t appear to be too talkative, be it by professionality, a personality trait, or just because she didn’t want to fraternize with them. 

“I was telling the supervisor about what we’ve learned about this system, Commander, we have discovered many things we weren’t even aware back on Sol."

“And they are amazing!” spoke Yui, an infantile smile covering her face.

“Yeah. That’s why I'm here,” said John, accomodating himself on his chair to listen better. “I want to know everything you can tell me about it. In understandable terms, of course. I'm no scientist.”

The Doctor and the Lab Assistant traded looks. “Yeah. That's why the Sergeant Major came here too,” said Davis.

“Yes,” responded Derek, sipping from a cup of coffee that looked like a toy in his hands. “I know, cap, I don’t look like someone interesting about that stuff. The Doctor already told me that,” John and he chuckled. Davis Weiber was a man that didn’t mince words. “you know what they say, you can always learn something new.”

“That’s how it is," replied John. "If I’ve learned something, that’s to always learn the most you can about the unknown before adventuring on it,” Yui got up and served him a cup of coffee. “Oh, thanks Yui,” he nodded. She smiled and returned to her seat.

“Well, I’ll start to not make you lose time, Commander Star,” said Doctor Weiber. “What do you want to know?”

But John was not in a hurry. Located at 30 Astronomical Units from them —30 times the distance between Earth and the Sun back on Earth— Their travel to the planet would take 16 hours, and he had nothing better to do. Or to be more precise, nothing he could do.

Engineering Chief Wallace and his team would take their time to repair those data modules from the Eternity of Return, and it would take Yuri’s team 8 hours to reach that destroyed ship. 

At times like those, the last thing John wanted was to be alone, because when he was, his mind would begin to overthink and generate all kinds of weird ideas that only made him feel needlessly bad.

“Don’t worry, Doctor,” he said. “Take your time. I’ve got some of it in the meanwhile. Tell me what you've discovered.”

“Very well, I will start with the stars of the system. Hawking-616a is an A-type white star, like Vega on the constellation of Lyra. Hawking-616b is a G-type yellow dwarf, just like our sun. It has about 90% the mass of Sol and 98% its brightness, so you could consider both distant twins.”

“What about Hawking-616c?” asked Derek. “I heard it was not discovered until later.”

“That’s actually a brown dwarf,” spoke Yui before Davis could. “It’s basically a star that was born dead and doesn’t generate fusion on its core. Think about a supermassive Jupiter. Oh, and most aren’t brown, but magenta, making them look like giant grapes. Hawking-616c is one of them. It orbits around Hawking-616a, and It’s about 1.3 times bigger than Jupiter, and 77 times more massive!”

She typed on the holoprojector of the table, and the 3D figures of the three objects illuminated in full color: Hawking-616a was the biggest one, shining in a bluish-white coloration. Hawking-616b was only one-third of its size, but like its solar homologous, its brightness was yellow. 

Hawking-616c was a fraction of the yellow dwarf, similar to a scale comparison of Jupiter and the Sun. Being a violet ball near the barycenter of both bigger stars, it probably was not visible until it reached its aphelion from both stars.

“Those are surrounded by a small asteroid bell, of course,” Doctor Weiber pressed a button on the projector. The ring of rock debris appeared, surrounding the stars. “after this, there are the most interesting objects. First, Hawking-616d,” 

He pressed again the screen, and a yellowish-orange object appeared after the bell. It resembled a mix of Mars and Venus covered by Earthian shades.

Yui continued to explain with enthusiasm. “This planet is very geologically active. It’s small, just a little bigger than Mars, but it has over 13000 volcanoes on its surface! It has a very strong magnetosphere, but sadly, its atmosphere is mostly composed of carbon and sulfur dioxides. Due to its proximity to the stars and a very strong greenhouse effect like Venus, its surface reaches temperatures of about 1100-Celcius grades. That’s enough to melt gold!”

“So, no life and no colonization there, right?” asked John.

“No,” said Yui, letting a childish sigh. “It’s too hot and toxic for any form of life we know.”

“But obviously,” continued Doctor Weiber. “that’s entirely different with the next planet: Hawking-616e.” 

He pressed again the projector, and the bluish-green, tan-colored object appeared next, with its wide rings extending up and down its three colorful moons of crimson, blue, and green. 

“As we told you,” Doctor Weiber continued in a calm manner. “the planet is about 1.5 the size of Earth, and its atmosphere is composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. Unlike the infernal Hawking-616d, this ringed planet is located in the habitable zone. It has neat temperatures averaging 12-25 celsius grades and full water cycles. It has also very eccentric geology. We believe it was a much bigger body once, but it got bombarded massively by asteroids or other objects of smaller sizes. The results? It lost lots of its original mass into space, which eventually formed its three moons and rings. Incredible, is not it? Earth used to have rings too during its primal stages.”

John traded looks with Derek and both nodded with focused eyes. “How interesting. I think we haven’t seen anything like this before, right?”

“That’s right,” said Yui. “But the moons aren’t less interesting either! Hawking-616e I —or the cherry-colored moon— is a lava world with a thin atmosphere. It’s smaller than our moon but bigger than Europa. Its temperature isn’t that high for what we would expect. Only 80-celsius grades, and it’s also very geologically active. It has its own magnetosphere!”

“The next one,” explained Doctor Weiber. “Hawking-616e II is the total contrary. It’s an oceanic world with no landmasses. It has a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere —albeit weaker than the one of Vita Nova— and temperatures of about 32-celsius grades. We also suspect high habitability on this planet.”

“Like some vacations on the floating New Saint Petersburg on Venus, right, Commander?” joked Derek.

“The last one, oh, it is the most interesting one!” said Yui. “Hawking-616 III. Its nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere makes us think that the planet was highly abundant in these elements when it was created, something very unusual for a stellar object. We are detecting lots of organic compounds coming from it, too! There’s an abundance of methane and phosphine in its atmosphere, although we are still studying what gives it that green coloration. It’s the second hottest, with temperatures of about 40-celsius grades, but that’s doesn’t hinder its habitability potential!” 

John thought about it. To think about a system with all those qualities was more like the product of a dream. Two habitable moons with atmospheres around an even more habitable planet! Before the terraforming era that the solar system passed by, Titan was the only moon known to have a thick atmosphere. Maybe they were in a place even more unique than Earth and the solar system!

But if that planet and its moons indeed hosted life, and the Eternity of Return got attacked by unhuman ships, wouldn’t that mean that maybe they arrived at the home of another advanced species? They could not detect anything coming from the planet that would say so; no radio interferences, no communications, no radiation, no artificial satellites, and nothing that would sign there was an advanced civilization living on that eccentric planet.

They would learn much more once they arrived. John didn’t realize when Katiya left. The calm Doctor Weiber and the excited Yui then continued to explain about the next objects, which they hadn’t studied much. Nonetheless, they revealed what they knew.

The gas giant Hawking-616f was an orange-colored world smaller than Saturn but eight times denser than Jupiter. It had a total of 89 moons with 18 in hydrostatic equilibrium. Its high density meant that it would be much easier to build platforms on it through the Technology of Reversal Buoyance. For what humans were used to on gas giants, the dense planet's temperature of -80-celsius grades was the cherry on the cake.

The Ice giant Hawking-616g was the most mysterious: It was a mini-Neptune of shiny aquamarine colors, chilling temperatures of -190 celsius grades, and only 18 moons, with 3 in hydrostatic equilibrium. It was also highly dense, meaning that it was a rich mine of materials much more exploitable than Uranus or Neptune back on the Solar System.

John forgot about his mission for those hours of chat. All that crossed his mind was how eccentric the universe could be, and how many more systems were capable of hosting life and even more eccentric were there.