Beyond Light

Life Signals.

John and his team returned to the Beyond Light with the recovered modules. They were expected in the main lab, where Doctor Weiber and Chief Wallace would give the devices a glimpse to decide if something could be saved from them or not. 

Sargeants Williams and Novikov tagged along with him, and Xi, Jeffrey, Yui, and Mike were in the lab too. Supervisors Ivanovich and Diaz also decided to show up. 

“Commander Star,” said Doctor Weiber as the three men entered, now free of their EVA suits. “do you have the modules with you?”

Yuri and Derek put the dark, rectangular devices on the aluminum table. “This is all we could recover, Doctor. Everything else was charred rocks and cables.”

Davis and Arthur inspected them like ancient relics which worth they didn’t know. “What do you say?” the Doctor asked the Engineer.

“Eh, I don’t think this one has salvation at all,” said Chief Wallace. He detached the plastic cover of the module. It broke in two, revealing a circuited board full of black charring and blown capacitors. It stunk like burnt copper and plastic. He threw it into the garbage bin. 

“Was not that from the Communications Bay?” asked Yuri.

“And I thought we saved the most important one,” complained John.

“These three left don’t seem to be that bad,” continued Chief Wallace. “But I will have to give them a better look later.”

“Please do,” said John. “Those are our only options to know what happened.”

“We know that the Eternity of Return was attacked and is now destroyed,” said Supervisor Diaz, a disgusted and condescending tone in her voice. “we should return to the Solar System now.”

Everyone looked at her. John took a step closer. “We only know what happened, Supervisor, not how and not who. Until we discover that, we are not going anywhere. I read the expedient.”

The dark-skinned woman shot her brown eyes at the brown of his. “You do know that overextending your mission for useless information is going to have repercussions on your final performance report? An expedient on which I will be working most of the time?”

“There is not going to be any overextension,” responded John calmly. “we are going to perform our mission like we were ordered to do. With all respect, don’t tell me how to do my job. I’m well aware of everything I can do and I can’t.”

The woman’s round expression contracted, shooting an ophidian look. She turned around and walked to the door. “LIBRA, send me later a detailed report of what was discussed here.”

“Wait there,” ordered John. Diaz halted by obligation. He still needed to leave something clear. “This goes for you too, Ivanovich,” he looked at the blonde woman, sitting behind the lab’s table with a cold, reserved stare. “you two were trying to access my personal files. May I ask you what you were trying to accomplish? Is there anything you want to know?”

Diaz spoke. “It’s our duty to know detailedly what goes in this ship and what does not, including personal files. It’s written on the Code of Service and Supervision Matters of the Independent Service of Intelligence, article 14. You can check it out. You are obliged to grant us full access to all databases aboard. Else, you are committing an administrative fault of grade 5. You know that can end you in a martial court, right?”

“LIBRA?” asked John. “Can you make sure about that?”

“Yes, Commander. The Supervisor is right. However, just like most of the articles written in that code, that rule only applies to registered vessels with a clear designation that is under total property under the state, as per articles 5 and 6 of the General Spacecraft Regulation Code.”

John’s lips showed a mild smirk. “You’ve heard LIBRA, Bella,” he called her name, assuming that was her real one. “The Beyond Light is a vessel under confidentiality code: OMEGA, which makes her already unregistered. She doesn’t have any official designation as she’s a new type, and her property is shared with the PFSR. That code doesn’t apply here, and as such, you aren’t allowed to access any private database aboard the ship. You hear me?” 

He made eye contact with both. Diaz looked as if she was about to explode. Ivanovich could not wear a more stoic and cold expression, but John felt that she was not fond of the idea either.

Diaz squeezed her lips, unable to argue anything back except petty insults that would put her in detention. She frowned and crossed the door. 

Nobody said anything. They all traded pale poker faces and then looked at John. The only exceptions were Katiya, who appeared to be devoid of any emotions, and Doctor Weiber, whose’s serious and sharp expression was impossible to erase through any kind of intimidation.

Yuri whistled. “Your women are sure even intenser than ours.”

“But you got the hotter ones…” Mike nodded at him with a grin, looking at supervisor Ivanovich. Xi was as serious as Katiya, and Jeffrey preferred to act professional around his superiors.

Yui rolled her eyes at him. “You pig.”

“Sorry about that, everyone,” spoke John. “but it needs to be very clear here that we are not a conventional ship on conventional space carrying a conventional operation. I know my limits, but I am the captain here. Does anyone want to argue against that?” he looked at his subordinates, but they just mildly negated with their heads at him and each other. “Fine. Let’s get back to work.”

Was he too rough with Diaz? He could have picked a better moment somewhere in private to tell her about his disagreement with her intrusion, yet he just exposed her out in front of his other direct subordinates like a teacher scolding an unwanted student.

Maybe yes, maybe no. The woman didn’t have tact either, and sometimes it was necessary to be hard with nosy and aggressive people like her. Besides, Admiral Hopkins selected her personally. It was clear that she was not there to be his friend nor make his work any easy.

“Yui,” continued Doctor Weiber. “send those modules to the Engineering Deck for Chief Wallace. He and his people know better than we do with electronics.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she grabbed them and went out of the room, asking John for permission and pushing Mike away.

“By the way,” said John. “I heard you had news about Vita Nova and the Eternity of Return. What did you find?”

“Ah, yes,” Doctor Weiber nodded and cleared his throat. “We—”

But the door suddenly spread. Yui showed up once again. “It’s amazing! We detected high traces of breathable air on—”

“Yui,” interrupted Doctor Weiber. She rolled her eyes and went outside once again. “Forgive that kid. She’s been desperately amazed by our discoveries. I wish I had her young enthusiasm, but sometimes she can get on my nerves. Where was I? Ah yes. Hawking-616e. The planet possesses an atmosphere with a very similar composition to Earth’s, being about 81% percent nitrogen and 19% oxygen. We have also detected many organic compounds on its surface, but I think that’s not necessary to say with what I’m going to show you.” 

He wrote a series of commands on the holographic screen and the image of the planet spread. 

It was a sphere that resembled Earth in so many ways: White poles and clouds hovering on its surface, blue oceans that weren’t as vast and were splattered and granulated across the surface, like thousands of mini-lakes. Most land areas were a color tan, but some others were covered by a green coloration that life could achieve.

Like Saturn, there was also a wide set of rings crowning the planet, except that darker. Three moons orbited it, and they all appeared to have their own atmospheres: a crimson one had lava veins cracking its surface; another one was totally blue, with clouds staining its sky, and the last one was covered mainly by a green shade, like the opaque atmospheres of Venus or Titan in the solar system. 

“That’s the Hawking-616e system, Commander, or Vita Nova,” explained Doctor Weiber. “I don't think I need to say the obvious about the planet…” he looked at the holoscreen with the same bright eyes.

Everyone looked at it with the same curious glow. Most of them already knew it, but enthusiasm kicked in when they looked at it again. 

“Phew… It’s like a giant Earth-Saturn hybrid!” said Mike. “Tell me, when are we going there? My butt is getting flat from sitting on the cockpit to work all day.”

“I think soon, Flight Ensign,” Artillery Chief Xi Liang said. “Commander Star, now the other news. We are detecting signals from the Eternity of Return coming from that planet.”

John frowned. “Signals? what kind of signals? the remains of the ship are far away from it.”

“Basic wave signatures that match with those of the Eternity of Return,” said Jeffrey. “nothing encoded and no messages, but they are clearly of artificial origin and match perfectly with the Eternity of Return’s.”

John’s hope revived after his lack of success with the scrapyard the dreadnought became. He thought about it. The drones couldn’t find any escape pods remaining on the ship. They had assumed they were destroyed, but maybe someone managed to escape and found shelter on the planet, being aware of its unique characteristics.

He knew their next step. They would also make sure that Vita Nova could host life, and then become the first humans to step on an extrasolar object —or the seconds, in case there was someone alive in its atmosphere.

“What are you thinking, son?” asked Derek, looking at his commander. 

“Our next step,” John nodded with decisiveness. “Mike, Jeffrey, Xi, set a flight course to Hawking-616e. We’re going there.”