Destination 581

[Solostaran]

//Brace yourselves for a short story, folks!

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The stars sit, unmoving, in view from the bridge of the ANS Glasgow. Its captain alone looks out at them presently, and that is understandable; few among them, after all, would be able to point out their destination from among the silent sentinels. Charon is still but a faint pinpoint amongst millions of others, and even that minimal level of visibility is but a recent development.

Standing on the bridge, Captain Saenger recognizes the seemingly placid state of his ship for as being quite the opposite; there is a distinct possibility that, far from standing still, they might be well past the previous record for maximum speed attained by humans in any craft, ever. That is not the point of their journey, however, for the Allied Nations would never waste a voyage on anything so mundane as pure science, even if the craft in question is only a prototype.

Yes, the war took precedence over all else; the war that had been raging now for more than fifty years, and that hopefully would not be lost in the coming few. Strife between the two factions, the two systems, had existed well before this current conflict, back even to the last millennium, to the earth-bound eras.

Socialism would never die, after all, and capitalism could never permit it to win. Fighting the commies is a sworn duty of all citizens of the Allied Nations, and it is quite possible that those loyal to the United Terran Socialist Nations have similar views about their own enemies.

As Captain (and renowned physicist) Eugene Saenger strides through the steel corridors of his home among the stars, scenes of gunfire and nuclear blasts are never far from his mind. Waves of infantry are being launched at each other on Titan even as the Glasgow passes; millions fighting and dying over a single chunk of rock.

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The fighters taxied down the runway, propellers spinning furiously as they labored to get airborne. Inside the compound, a quite different design hovered motionlessly in a wind tunnel. Its designer was currently conversing with his superior in the Air Ministry, who (among many others) considered the entire project to be fanciful in nature. It was not, they maintained, possible to make a bomber that could reach the United States without refueling, not even if that bomber were rocket-powered. The fact that its designer claimed that it was capable of entering Earth's orbit was simply more evidence that the project was merely a waste of the Reich's time and resources. The engineer in question would need to be reassigned to something more practical.

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In truth, no one on board the Glasgow knows what their true mission is. Rumor has it that they are tasked with crippling in some way the UTSN staging outpost, yet the vessel has no exterior armaments of any kind. There are no mysterious crates in the cargo hold; they carry no nuclear payload to be launched or even jettisoned. Perhaps they are being sent only for purpose of reconnaissance.

On the bridge's status screen, a communication notification light blinks on. Messages, traveling as they must at the speed of light, would take several days to reach them from Earth this far out, and Earth is indeed the origin of this one in particular. The AN Secretary of Defense would never travel offworld, after all. Saenger, standing on the bridge, notices the message immediately, and plays the recording aloud, sure in his knowledge that no one unauthorized would be around to hear it.

“Glasgow, this is Secretary Johnson. I am, no doubt, speaking to Captain Saenger. You will hopefully be preparing to initiate deceleration maneuvers at the time this reaches you. Please refrain from doing so until this message finishes playing. You are, no doubt, curious as to the nature of your mission, and about the fact of my direct communication with you during this busy time. I speak to you directly because you need to understand, believe, and follow the orders that I am about to send you regarding the rest of your voyage. For that purpose, no mere intermediary pencil-pusher will suffice.

“The ANS Glasgow, as you know better than anyone, is the first GUT-drive ship ever made, and is capable of acceleration on a level to which no other ship has ever aspired. We here are just as interested as you are in seeing exactly how fast she can go. Do not slow down. Maintain your current headings, and continue at maximum thrust. This is the extent of your mission; through this, we will do irreparable damage to the UTSN. Your little voyage could be the turning point of the war. Johnson out.”

Saenger, who has scarcely moved while the Secretary spoke, pushes the button to play the message again. As Johnson's voice is heard through the speakers once more, he continues to remain still; his face pensive, but with eyes full of fear.

[Solostaran]

With the Amerika Bomber project scrapped, its chief engineer was reassigned to work on more mundane tasks; ramjet optimization in particular. As work on said propulsion mechanism turned inevitably sour, he began to shift more and more of his focus to work not funded by the Reich. That, for him, meant spacecraft propulsion.

Solar sails. Conductive rails could be deployed radially from craft in a vacuum in order to generate an electric field in which photons would interact, propelling the craft either towards or away from the sun depending on the polarity of the field, and requiring only solar wind and a small electric generator to do it. Spinning arrays of such rails could also generate a gravitational field on the inside of the ring, so that passengers could remain in relative comfort. Add tilt as necessary to the spinning rails, and you have a craft that can be maneuvered easily. That was the hope, anyway.

He would never live to see anyone take notice of his work in solar propulsion, nor even to see Man travel farther out than the moon. He would not be alive still when his work on the Amerika Bomber was put to use by the US for their Space Shuttles, or by the Koreans for the destruction of the International Space Station. He would be unaware of the Lunar Colony, of the mining efforts on Mars. He would never know of the Great War.

In 2036, Russia's corrupt Democracy would be overthrown, replaced with a new Socialist regime. In 2057, President James Roosevelt would dissolve the US Congress and replace the the Constitution with a new document of his own making, uniting the Western world behind him as he explored new options for governments that would be more favorable to his corporate allies.

Japan, China, India, and the EU would unite behind Roosevelt's banner, and succeed in restoring a colonial system to the Southern Hemisphere before turning their eyes spaceward. Meanwhile, the newly established government in Russia would merge with the now-unified Korea and restored Ottoman Empire (spanning most of the Middle East) in order to stake their own claims, both terrestrial and offworld. It would not be long before they realized that there would not be enough space to go around.

In 2124, after a harsh summer offensive by the UTSN, the Allied Nations would deploy nuclear weaponry to strategic locations throughout the now-socialist-dominated southern hemisphere. In retaliation, the UTSN became the first “nation” to employ solar sail technology, launching a massive 3-gigaton bomb at the entrenched AN lunar outpost, vaporizing the entire moon. The next few years were among the harshest in recorded history; the absence of tidal pressures wreaked havoc on the global climate and ecosystem, while nuclear fallout from the southern hemisphere seeped inevitably into the ocean, and eventually irradiated most of the world's water supply. At the same time, clouds from the blasts filtered out much of the sun's life-giving rays, plunging the earth into a nuclear winter that was as cold as Earth had ever been since the Ice Age.

Humanity, in a sense, survived. Both nations shifted their populations downward, into twisting warrens dug deep into the earth. Geothermal energy powered the systems to filter out the radiation from drinking water, and made possible the growth of crops in the massive underground hydroponic bays. Humans, robbed of their homes, of both sun and moon, grass and trees, had nothing left to look to on Earth. From that point, the only way to go has been up.

The dream of all who live is to find a new home, a new Earth. It has forever been theorized that our own planet could not be alone in its capacity to support life, yet no other has ever been found. The propaganda of each nation blames the other for both of the twin apocalypses, and the citizens find it necessary to believe. The war has never since ceased or died down, although Earth is no longer an objective of any value. Battles are waged over asteroids, moons, and sometimes even planets. The forces suffer from no lack of motivation, for life is nowhere so desolate and worthless as on the homeworld. To live on a ship, to fight on the actual surface of a world, with the entirety of it safely below one's feet, is the dream to which all aspire.

Conflict, however, inevitably become nuclear. With the ability to simply blame the other nation for any unsavory conduct in war, neither feels any restraint whatsoever. Bombing any targets on Earth would be pointless, but plenty of other potential blast zones have always existed.

[Solostaran]

Captain Saenger ponders such things, as he runs the calculations to determine the ramifications of Johnson's latest order. A message from his brother is still sitting in the logs, however, unheard as of yet. With considerable effort, he abandons his paranoid mental ramblings and reviews the contents of that particular transmission. Unlike the previous one, no audio files are included; just a plain-text message and what appears to be a scanned document of considerable age.

He reads the message first, which merely wishes him well and instructs him to look at the document. Seeing as he has considerable time for the wasting, he does so. The multiple-document appears to be some sort of schematic or blueprint, for some sort of archaic propulsion technology perhaps. Distinctive radial struts and electric field lines inform him that said propulsion mechanism is in fact a relatively sophisticated solar sail; very similar, in fact, to what could be found on modern missiles, fighters, and troop transports. The very same technology that made the present war possible; that inadvertently led to the deaths of billions of people. A lone signature, at the bottom of the last page, catches his attention: Eugen Sänger. The name that is his, that was his grandfather's before him, and on back for many generations. It is possible.

The parallel to his present situation is undeniable. Unified-Theory propulsion could indeed open up many more avenues which would inevitably be used to increase the efficiency of the mass slaughter taking place; it would allow more people than ever to be sent to the front, and at much greater speeds. Before he decides how to handle this revelation, however, Saenger reviews the results of the number-crunching.

Total annihilation. In sixty days, both Charon and Pluto will cease to exist, as will he and the nearly two hundred other inhabitants of the ship, peaceful and untroubled in their cryogenic preservation pods. If he stays the course, that is.

There is no need for immediate action, still. Two months is plenty of time, when you're traveling at a considerable fraction of the speed of light. No, now was the time to remain calm. Time, again, is still on their side. If Saenger uses it wisely, then perhaps more souls than are aboard his ship will benefit. So he thinks. As far as he knows, everyone with a working knowledge of how to build a GUT-drive is on the Glasgow, although the plans that they drew up and evidence of construction methods are still on Earth. That could be changed. As the final authority on the project, he has the power to destroy the lot of it. Power that he uses posthaste, quickly issuing commands that would take a while to reach their destination.

It is of primary importance that no suspicion be aroused prior to the enactment of those homebound commands. He will wait a month. It would be best to remain conscious and alert during that time, monitoring their situation, just in case. In case of what, he does not know. Regardless, he waits. Perhaps he hopes that the government will decide against sacrificing hundreds of civilians. It doesn't. Or perhaps he hopes that the war will miraculously cease. That doesn't happen either. He remains on the bridge during the day, contemplating the fate of humanity as he stares ahead, and sleeps the troubled sleep of those who fear for more lives than their own. Meanwhile, he reviews his options, and looks for one that could be his salvation. The sensors on the hull of the ship are set to scour the stars, and store all relevant information in the logs. Saenger spends weeks reviewing them, with strained eyes and a perpetually-empty coffee mug. There is never enough time for the living.

And so the month passes. The sensors turn, the data flows, the coffee brews, and the man works. Due to the fact that the Glasgow is accelerating at a nearly-constant rate of one-point-five gees, the scene is not so dissimilar from an office on Earth. Gravity is merely a bit more crushing; the weight on one's shoulders a bit heavier. As one sleeps, or tries to, their lungs must work harder against the force pushing down on them. Coupled with long-term confinement and isolation, the experience can be nothing but dreadfully oppressive.

For Saenger, however, the end of that time period comes far too soon, as does the moment of truth. As much as he wishes to be certain in his decision, he must operate based on the incomplete data at his disposal. The new vector is being calculated as the last few days of grace that he has allotted himself crawl by. He must remain on schedule, but the reasons for doing so are murky at best. What's a few more days, anyhow? He knows, however, that said argument would remain valid past the point at which they could safely change course. Even with faulty data, there is no time like the present.

The course correction is a minor one, only a few degrees to the right. The change in destination, however, will be anything but. Gliese 581, some twenty light-years away. Even with their ship, the journey would take half a lifetime. Luckily, the war has spawned a solution to that problem, as with the problem of supply consumption. The pods, which had initially seemed to be overkill for the newly-shortened voyage, would now save them all. Their bodies, half-frozen, would age only marginally while they slept the peaceful, dreamless sleep of the newly-born and the soon-to-die. The others would not even need to be awakened during the interim; he could explain everything once they arrived.

Gliese 581 D is habitable, or at least relatively so. The temperatures were within survivable levels and the presence of water was at least possible, if unconfirmed. Beyond that, he did not know. They have only just enough fuel to stop themselves and perhaps to land when they got there, but that alone does not necessitate an end of traveling. The drive runs off of water alone as feul, so they could simply scoop up some more and continue on their way. They could still be followed, if not immediately. It will not be long before someone else uses the clues that they have inevitably in order to copy their design, assuming that the government didn't begin construction of more ships like their own before the plans were destroyed. Perhaps refinements were already being made that would make such a voyage faster. In any case, any missiles fired after them would not be limited to accelerating at a mere one-point-five gee; an unmanned projectile would not need to be limited in accelerating capacity for the sake of human comfort. Perhaps that is all paranoia, though. The Allied Nations have more important things to worry about than a renegade ship full of civilians, so long as they didn't interfere with the war effort. This last thought is a comfort to Saenger as the blackness of computer-controlled anesthesia spreads from the corners of his vision; the view through the glass of his pod, the view that consisted entirely of bare steel, fades into darkness.

[Solostaran]

Across the room from the massive bed, a red light blinks on. It is followed shortly by the sound of a cacophony of raised voices, incessantly arguing in what is, to the sleep-fogged mind of the room's occupant, total gibberish. As time passes and the fog begins to recede, he begins to hear snatches of phrases; references to lights, moons, and comets. And Reds. ANS Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson bolts upright, instantly regretting the decision as his back cries out in agony. He eases his massive girth slowly off of the bed, and lumbers over to the corner in which the light and the speaker sit. As he sits (once again) in the wide-bottomed chair conveniently waiting for him, the room is still dark.

“Status?” he asks, attempting to mask his drowsiness and buy himself some time to think; he still has no idea why he has been awoken.

“Sir, we have what looks to be a comet heading towards us, and calculations so far show a very high probability of collision.”

“Collision with who? Us, or the Commies?”

“The Reds, sir, but that's not as good as it sounds. As you know, their side has been pretty quiet recently; ever since the recent launches. Between visible activity and radio transmissions, it's looking almost as if the last few supply convoys may have been something more along the lines of relocation, or even evacuation.”

“How would they have known about this so far in advance?” Johnson replies slowly, although he is now beginning to shrug off the last of his grogginess. He knows that he should know the answer to his own question already, and probably does know it with the faculties of which he is not currently in possession.

“Sir, they may not have. It makes more sense from their perspective to finish shifting their population to Charon, seeing as material resources out there are still mostly unexploited. Besides, they don't have much territory left in the core worlds. Sir, surely you were already aware of this?” a voice asks quizzically.

“If this is all the case, then why do you even bother me with such nonsense? If it's heading toward the Commies, and there are no Commies for it to hit, then it's not of concern to us any way you slice it. Good day.” With this, he powers down and deactivates the emergency communications terminal with hands still largely unresponsive to his neural signals, and slides the chair back over to the side of the bed, where he promptly deposits himself.

Johnson is a nearly-stereotypical earth-dweller, long ago grown accustomed to small earth-and-steel chambers and corridors. Walking around is seldom necessary, nor sensible. All that mobility ever does is remind Johnson and his compatriots of the upper world, left behind so long ago and forbidden to visit even on occasion. In the beginning of these dark times, municipal governments and citizen groups pushed to incorporate maintenance of some form of greenery into civil planning and budgeting, but this fell by the wayside as the gap between what the war needed and what Earth could produce increased. Now, the only greenery to be seen is in the hydroponics bays, where the high-intensity rays of simulated sunlight are a serious hazard and youth often break into in order to get a glimpse of plants for the first, and usually only, time in their life.

Presently, loud ringing from another corner of the room disturbs Johnson's ever-so-precious rest. This time, it is an ancient device serving as a terminal in a larger copper-wire backup communication system, a terminal consisting of a speaker and mouthpiece enclosed in red plastic, resting on an antique “dialing” device of the same hue. Johnson's sleep was only a light one, and he now jumps up (once again being surprised by his aching back) and picks up the handset.

“What's going on?” he says quickly, much more awake and alert than he had been in his prior communication.

“The object headed towards us; it's from Charon!” replies the voice on the other end, bypassing all of the requisite formalities.

“Towards us? From Charon? I thought this was going to hit the other side?”

“It is. According to our scientists, both sides will be one and the same by that point. We're talking big.”

“How big? What do you mean, all the same?” Johnson replies, anger beginning to surge forward despite his own culpability.

“It doesn't weigh much more than the routine stuff that burns up in our atmosphere every month. However, it's traveling at a speed the likes of which we've never seen.”

In a flash of realization, Johnson' brain makes the connection. “Plan of action?” he asks, although he already knows what the answer will be.

“Nuclear, sir.”

“Agreed. What do we have in that area?”

“Hold on, let me check AMiRS.”

The Allied Missile Response system (AmiRS for short) is the network of missile-based defense systems that has been used by the AN for more than fifty years as an additional deterrent to attacks on the Western Hemisphere by the UTSN. Nothing can cross the line without being shot down, nuclear or otherwise. Threats from extraterran (offworld) sources, such as the Deimos colony, have also been dispatched in the past prior to meeting the surface.

“Sir, you're not going to like this. It's going to hit right over Central Asia, and you and I both know that we have nothing over there anymore. The best I can do is Britain.”

“Then let's hope it works. Could you give me some time comparisons?”

“Sir, this is like nothing we've ever seen. We have only two hours left, and the British defense site hasn't been --”

“Just do it!” Johnson nearly roars, frightened as he has never been in the entirety of his life as he hangs up the phone. His thoughts wander back to the Glasgow, and of the end of its own voyage. With any luck, they would have the last laugh. Without, they were all dead.

Johnson walks the short distance to the adjoining room that serves as a kitchen and prepares his morning meal, early as it is. He retrieves the packet from one compartment and the plate from another, and places one on top of the other in a third compartment to be heated. His back chooses this precise moment to begin to spasm and he, the leader of the Free World, is soon lying on the floor, unable to move aside from vain flailing.

Within two hours, the pair of nuclear-warhead-equipped missiles are in the air. As they fly towards what is now recognizable as a spacecraft of some sort, it is clear and apparent that some error in the calculations has been committed. In truth, the fact that the object was actually accelerating hit home in the scientists a mere thirty minutes before, by which point the coordinates were locked in. No one even then recognizes that the magnitude of said acceleration is as great as it is, for they all still think that they are dealing with a chunk of rock or a missile, gradually slowing as it crosses the void. Not so.

On August 27, 2205, the UTS Nagasaki collides with earth. The force of the impact, of a hundred-ton vessel hitting the earth while traveling at nearly twenty percent of the speed of light, is beyond the scope of prior human experience. The meteor that caused the last extinction event pales to complete and utter insignificance to this, the strike that would finish the job. The Nagasaki propels itself hundreds of miles into the earth, a number now of no importance due to the fact that Earth now ceases to exist as a single entity. As huge portions of Earth's crust propel themselves out of what was the atmosphere, giant gouts of magma and what were metals from the planet's core immolate said chunks, which fragment further among these and the giant gouts of vapor that spew like geysers from what was formerly the sea. An observer, if there was such a thing, would already see the first beginnings of the formation of the massive cloud of dust that would soon sit in Earth's place, before slowly being redistributed by the forces of gravity to form a ring, or perhaps to slowly coalesce and, after millenia, gather again into a planet. Whichever way things go, humanity will not likely live long enough to find out.



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/*Most of the science and history are fully accurate, with one exception:
The solar sail that Sänger developed was a traditional square reflective one, not an electric solar wind sail. We owe that one to Pekka Janhunen of Finland.

The epilogue was written a week or so after finishing the rest of the story, after I decided not to continue it with further installments and such. If I change my mind in that regard, it can be removed.

Indentation doesn't work on these forums, which will probably make reading this a bit more of a pain in the ass than it would be otherwise. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed the read.*/