Epilogue

Xyston wormhole facility. Luna

Year 3129, Twelve years later

Ohmu and I flew through the active portal on our Wart at nearly twenty kilometers per hour. Short for Wormhole Autonomous Rapid Transfer, the wart vehicle resembled a short utility pole with fore and aft thrusters, handlebars, and foot pegs. The Wart had room for up to four if it telescoped to its maximum length, but for this trip, only the android and I were aboard, each of us clinging tightly to the central shaft of the slender vehicle like the tree-huggers of old.

We were returning from visiting Serenity and Cassius’s new fledgling colony on a planet of Sigma Draconis, mankind’s most distant world yet to be settled. At 18.8 light years distance, of all of humanity’s wormhole facilities, only the most advanced Xyston wormhole facility could stab that far. And, at that extreme range, Xyston could only transmit smaller, very narrow cargos or vehicles, such as the Wart we were currently riding.

Still, my great-granddaughter had not been detoured away from living on such an isolated and distant world. Probes had found that ‘Siggy’ had a very Earthlike, albeit watery, world and upon seeing the virtually unlimited islands surrounded by pristine beaches, the idea for an off-planet version of Heels in the Sand had been borne. Of course, they hadn’t named it Twin Heels, despite my teasing.

The world was named Aqualia, and the colony beachhead, Serenity’s resort island being that in the most literal sense, was called Arcadia. No simple tourist was permitted access as of yet. Instead, she hosted researchers and explorers along with all the support personnel needed on a new frontier world with limited support. It was a rugged and dangerous place and only the most adventuresome and courageous traveler could partake of its beauty.

The lifeforms on Aqualia were similar to Earth life but with enough differences to be unsettling. The areas away from Arcadia’s security cordon were also dangerous and mysteries abounded. I loved the place! It was a perfect counter to the potential stagnation which might result on the fully-mastered utopian Earth. Well, mastered other than the long war of retribution we were now embarking on against the Assemblage colony worlds.

But, despite my adoration for Aqualia and Arcadia, I had other obligations to keep and it had been time to come home. Having apparently survived the trip’s final hazard, the rapid transit through Xyston, our Wart quickly and noisily decelerated using its compressed cold gas thrusters. We came to a stop a dozen meters short of the hemispherical wormhole chamber’s outer wall. The Wart now hovering easily in the much-lighter lunar gravity.

“I hate these rapid transfers,” I muttered.

“It saves power,” was Ohmu’s simplified reply. The android then proceeded to dress me down. “Man up or close your eyes like you always do.”

The Wart slowly rotated in place, bringing its nose around to face toward the Xyston mechanism. The wormhole toroid looked to be shutting down though.

“Do we have to wait for Xyston to recharge?” I asked.

Travel to and from Arcadia was very energy intensive and even the Luna grid was pressed to keep up with Xyston’s needs.

“No, Destiny’s wormhole will bring us in,” Ohmu replied. “Portal formation will commence as soon as we are in full vacuum.”

I felt my skin suit growing firmer as the air pressure rapidly dropped. My hood seals inflated and my faceplate display began showing breathing air remaining. The noise from the firing gas thrusters keeping us in the hover faded, as the nitrogen pressurizing the chamber was pumped clear. The Xyston chamber had been pressurized to match the thicker 112 kPa atmospheric pressure of Aqualia.

Now, it was being opened to the vacuum of space to clear us of any airborne spores or contaminants we may have brought back with us. Everything grew dead quiet but I could still feel the vibration of the Wart’s thrusters through my hand grips.

Once we were in hard vacuum, a new wormhole portal tore open space directly in front of us. I clenched my already stressed stomach from proximity to the sudden spatial distortion. The new portal was twice the diameter of Xyston’s, meaning I could remain sitting up and not have to cling tightly to the Wart’s narrow body. A short blast of compressed gas had us moving toward this new portal.

I braced myself but kept my eyes open, dammit! as we passed through the portal. There was the sudden feeling of nothing/everywhere and we were instantly in Destiny’s more-intimate wormhole sphere. I turned my head and saw the still-active portal we’d just crossed through behind us now surrounded by Destiny’s more-compact, state-of-the-art wormhole generator.

It was so amazingly small! Only a meter or so larger than the portal it had created in its center. It was also not physically tied down by a bulky rotating gantry. No, this miracle of wizardry was freely floating in the center of the spheroid, held in place by AI-controlled magnetic shackles and rotators. Its exotic matter and energy were being supplied by even smaller and more compact local shunting wormholes. We’d come a long way in twelve years!

“Ohmu,” I subvocalized. “Since we are already in a vacuum, does the Wart have enough propellant remaining to take us out and do a look-about around the ship?”

Ohmu did not bother to respond. Instead, a circular hatch slid open ahead of us revealing beyond the star-filled blackness of space. As the hatch opened almost completely, the curve of Vesta just came into view. The Wart blew another long blast and we shot out the hatch.

About a hundred meters out, we blew to a stop and the Wart flipped end for end. My spectacular view of space and Vesta disappeared as Destiny, in all its awesome splendor, rotated into view before us. Much larger that the first four faster-than-light test ships which had been built before it, my flagship needed the extra size because of its mission. We were taking her out to meet the Hemru. And at two-hundred, fifty-six light years for the round trip, she needed her size to support the long sea legs required.

—do you wish a complete circuit?— Ohmu asked in my implant. —It will need to be done rapidly as you only have six minutes of remaining air reserves.—

“No, just take us up to the bow cargo airlock,” I replied.

We could disembark there and the Wart could get itself back to the wormhole spheroid on its own later. Ohmu responded by thrusting the Wart sideways. This left us facing the starship as we drifted along its length. As always, I grew emotional when contemplating what humanity had achieved so rapidly.

Destiny was both familiar and alien. A mixture of organic, like a blue whale or some other deep-sea leviathan, and the symmetrical aspect of something artificial, a mechanical rigidity and complexity almost like a gas refinery or ocean-going cargo vessel.

Over four hundred meters long and with multiple segments up to thirty meters in diameter, Destiny was composed of blended oblate spheroids, narrower at the bow and stern and with larger diameters near the middle. If an earthworm had multiple bands, Destiny might have resembled a fat, bloated version, bulging at each ring as if overfed and ready to pop. Still, I loved how it looked.

The stern and bow formations were the wormhole grappling caterpillars, the coils initialized and then pulled the spatial rift around and over the middle segments of the ship, never allowing its physical structure to penetrate the wormhole and keeping it safe and separate from normal space. And, by being kept isolated, Destiny was able to ride the edge of subspace, cheating standard physics while doing so.

Here and there, along the almost-streamlined conjoined, bulging spheroids were complex-looking protuberances; airlock hatches, antennas, energy emitters, missile and probe launchers, and even low-tech thrusters nozzles for fine movements such as docking and station keeping.

The larger, centrally-located spheroids were the ship’s fuel and oxygen tanks. Some full of fusion fuel and others containing surplus exotic matter needed for any gross spatial velocity adjustments. One of the segments, a true sphere, was the near-space transport wormhole chamber that had just brought us here and from which we’d just exited.

With its five AU range, Destiny’s near-space transport wormhole would be used for excursions down to any planetary surface, saving us the mass and volume of storing a lander large enough to have return-to-orbit capability. I still almost giggled as I thought of how closely we were mimicking the functions shown in the old television show Star Trek, with our wormhole being our ‘transporter’.

Another perfect spheroid was our carrier deck. Destiny carried nearly twenty space-capable, autonomous fighter craft, even more space-worthy mobile repair units, and a few human shuttlecraft, even one of the aforementioned bulky landing craft with return capability, simply for redundancy. I could not resist naming our shuttlecraft Galileo, and increase the ties to the fictional starship of old.

We approached Destiny’s forward crew and armament sections. Now in front of us was a large, wide bulging ring. The ring’s outer diameter almost matched those of the large fuel spheroids now behind us. Inside this ring were the ship’s partial-gravity living spaces.

There was only one deck with simulated gravity in the ring but it was twenty meters wide and with a floor diameter of twenty-eight meters. This gave us over eighteen hundred square meters of living space and almost three times that in volume. The perceived G force was only sixty percent of Earth’s gravity, or the minimum to keep a shell healthy and strong, as long as one followed a regular exercise schedule.

The hab ring was where the active human passengers would spend the bulk of their time. Destiny carried about a dozen such active humans. It also carried over a hundred humans in various states of simulated existence, stored as mind-data, or physical bio-suspension.

Aside from one, copies of all of Sol system’s Directors were aboard as mind-data recordings. Some of them chose to remain aware and active inside our local version of simulated reality. The rest chose to simply be stored as data in the ship’s extensive data banks. They would only be brought aware into the simulated reality if some binding treaty needed signing, or humanity was forced to surrender to some higher power. Other options for them included being downloaded into newly-grown shells, which would take a decade minimum, or for them to borrow one of three mature generic shells currently in bio-suspension.

We passed the habitat ring and our destination revealed itself in the form of an opening large cargo airlock hatch complete with perimeter warning lights flashing. The wart’s thrusters fired briefly, bringing our forward momentum to a halt just as we became aligned with the open hatch. A short burst from a rear jet started us moving inward to the Destiny. As we closed the distance, a sensor cluster came into view, having rotated around the curving hull of the ship on its circular mounting rails.

There were two of the prominent rails forward of the cargo spheroid, one for sensors and the other for side-facing weaponry. No matter the current orientation of Destiny, the ring mounts could bring our side guns or scanners to bear.

We passed through the hatch ring and into the voluminous cargo airlock. Our forward jets puffed briefly slowing us and allowing a mechanical grappler to snatch the floating Wart. Behind us, the airlock hatch sealed shut and I almost instantly felt air pressure rising outside my skin suit. My implants kicked in to mute the roar as the noise grew to tolerable limits.

Inside, the inner lock opened and I found Riho waiting for us. I launched myself into her waiting arms. Her catch turned into a long hug which I returned in kind. She then guided me to a handhold and greeted Ohmu with a nod.

“How did you know we would be coming in this way?” I asked.

“Please,” she replied, sounding slightly off-put. “How long have I known you? I guessed that you would want one final look at your baby before we depart.”

“You have me figured out.”

“How were Serenity and Cassius ... and how was Aqualia?” she asked after we pulled ourselves through the cargo rackage, leaving the airlock behind.

“Serenity and Cassius are doing great!” I replied. “They seem to be having fun despite how busy they are and how much work needs to be done. Aqualia is ... amazing! And scary. Some of the sea behemoths they’ve spotted are over one hundred meters long and they’ve only begun to look!”

“Was Serenity pregnant?” Riho asked.

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “How did you know?”

“Something about her message to you asking you to come,” she replied, knowingly. “It’s a women’s intuition thing.”

I just looked at my alien download friend skeptically. If she had intuited Serenity’s condition, then she was really becoming human, or she hadn’t and had just made a very human joke. Either was impressive and it would be interesting to see how she acted back among her own kind. My gut feelings were that all would not go as smoothly as Riho hoped.

—John, Riho?—Naomi spoke into our implants. —Please make your way to the main bridge. We will begin our expedition when you arrive.—

The clock was ticking so I pulled myself faster. Ohmu passed us by as Riho and I stopped at the suit locker so I could shed my skin suit. As I undressed, Riho asked me more questions about my trip.

“The baby?” Riho prompted, deflecting me from describing more xenobiology wonders.

“A boy,” I replied, suddenly filled with clear pride. “John Benjamin. They transferred him into a uterine replicator while I was there. I even got to hold his transfer sack.”