DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME CONTINUES...
His exceptional tolerance to being frozen and decanted had pushed him forward into a smaller group. More training and testing followed. Celestial navigation and what maintenance could be performed on the tugs were taught, at an extensive level. No details are released on any potential mission. What kind of person were they looking for?
His high grades made him one of the finalists. Now they summoned him to a private meeting. He met a manager of some foundation, someone who said he was a political analyst, and a retired Admiral he had not seen in years.
They told him the story, and about the plan.
"This colonizing effort is well and good, but there are evil forces around. Things aren't as peaceful as everyone thinks it is."
Admiral Rofiir Juhaambi still radiated calm confidence, despite having a body that was now thin and frail. He felt better just hearing the old man's voice.
"You were there in your first term of service. How fortunate was it that our group, really just trainees, instructors and a few retired veterans, were ready? Luck, skill and audacity were on display as our untried emergency response team saved RELATIVITY from an act of sabotage."
Juhaambi returned to the table, where he sat down and sighed. That tired face assumed its typical severe look.
The political analyst stood up. He was a small, withdrawn looking man who had birdlike attributes. His body seemed to expand and fill with energy as he walked right up to the candidate. He made a motion similar to that of a bird preening feathers, then froze in place, looking him right in the eyes.
"We started watching everyone in that group then, knowing that we needed a special person.
"You came to receive increased scrutiny because of your service aboard RELATIVITY. You excelled in shipboard orientation. We monitored your computer access and saw your searches. You realized the procedures for dropping target beacons and 'SURVEY SENSOR PODS' were adapted from training in being a forward observer directing artillery fire."
Finally he turned away and walked towards the table. Reaching his seat, he made another birdlike gesture and looked into the candidate's eyes again, in that same frozen stance.
"You also kept your mouth shut about it."
He sat down and withdrew into himself again. If this one had a sense of humor, it was miniscule.
The foundation manager stood up. He pushed his chair in front of him, bringing it next to the candidate. He sat down and smiled.
"I am in total agreement with my friends here. We have had a plan like this on our 'wish list' of things we wanted to do to preserve Alliance culture. With ALEXUS consultation and assistance, my foundation has just enough bricks to fund this project."
He smiled again. One couldn't help but be drawn into a spell cast by his easy charm.
"Now, your skillset has made you a rare individual. Perhaps you are the person we are looking for. Someone skilled enough, and perhaps crazy enough, to volunteer for a lonely mission. With a hyperwave relay to ALEXUS for consultation and an extreme level of mekano-assist to make your task easier."
He stopped speaking and his smile faded. Now he looked serious, indeed grim.
"Never to see Aerth again, at least not in a reasonable amount of time."
Admiral Juhaambi spoke again.
"Our plan is to send a separate vehicle to the existing colonies and explore beyond. Deploying an independent hyperwave system, we can establish contact with those elsewhere who hold the same beliefs. They will also receive additions to their existing small caches of equipment, food and weapons. One never knows when prudent actions staged in secret would be an asset."
So went his official introduction to project LONG-SHOT.
With another smile, the manager withdrew and returned to his place next to the two others. No one spoke as they watched him for a reaction and response.
The candidate could hear his own heartbeat in that silence. He stood up and walked slowly one way, then another as thoughts raced through his mind.
With his RELATIVITY shakedown experience, he had hoped to be selected as a crewmember aboard STARDUST. When it did not happen, it seemed that his luck was not working.
He stopped for a moment, then resumed his slow wandering. Now he saw that it probably had been after all.
Why ship out as a crewmember and eventual colonist, with a constant struggle for survival on a harsh frontier afterwards? This opportunity is one he cannot turn away from. This is an adventure!
He stopped his wandering and eyes focused. He walked up to the table, stopping in front of Admiral Juhaambi.
"Your offer is eagerly accepted!"
Juhaambi stood up and shook his hand.
"Thank you," he whispered.
"Your bravery and sacrifice may preserve freedom for those in our unknown future."
He was shuttled to a hidden base in the Oort cloud, far above the ecliptic. More training followed. Courses in interstellar piloting and combat rated vacc suit operations were undertaken as part of his orientation to a new vehicle.
Finally everything was ready. Mac made a final inspection tour of his vehicle the night before his departure. Everything checked out. He stood on an almost deserted flight deck and looked out of an expanse of plasteel into nebula shrouded darkness.
Admiral Juhaambi came onto the flight deck. So thin and frail, one might think a gust of wind from an opening airlock would topple him. He joined Mac in looking at the view.
One of the two guards standing by the hatch leaned forward and spoke into a microphone. Seconds later another guard entered, stopping at the Admiral's side. He held a bracket holding two recycle style spacers' drinking bulbs. The Admiral released one bulb and handed it to the standing man.
"I don't know that I have your bravery, son."
"Sir, one does not have to be excessively brave to embark on an adventure."
They sipped at ice-cold fried maartinis and looked out at an expanse of open space.
"Your launch is the culmination of thirty years of planning and twelve of training. Just know that you carry the seeds of a free future. I know I will not live to see it, but our culture will survive."
"Thank you, sir. You are and will continue to be an inspiration to me."
He was given a quiet sendoff that next morning.
After his deployment, he made changes to the programmed mission profile. Instead of a long sleep as the planners had expected, he bargained with ALEXUS. Trading work shifts and maintenance schedules, he arranged to be frozen and decanted on a regular basis.
His awake times were frequent and brief. Being available to perform activities on an accelerated schedule, his systems easily remained in an almost perfect condition.
Time had no value here. In his isolation, he had stopped looking at the elapsed mission time almost immediately after launch. Soon he had ordered ALEXUS to cease giving him updates. He had a vague guess that he might have been in flight for decades, but he was very uncertain. Does it really matter, here?
At the beginning of a programmed extended period of time in low-power mode, he had been looking forward to a long sleep and multiple active dreams.
It was a game to him, to dream and let his imagination wander. To pretend to have control over his dreams, making changes to his unconscious reality. To have hair again as in his youth.
A brief contact with the real existence happens. Perform vital maintenance and deployment tasks, then return to his increasingly malleable dreamscapes. Forays into the real world were made with increasing reluctance.
That last dream, though.
He knew only a few aboard RELATIVITY and had no reason to think about that vehicle more than OUTBOUND or STARDUST. Yet his dream morphed out of his control at the end, becoming scenes of the familiar and a terrifying unknown mixed together.
A military dictatorship? Gladiatorial games? Attack by intelligent machines?
He had ALEXUS read to him constantly during his awake times, when performing maintenance. Why not, with no one else to talk to? He learned extensively about dream states. He knew that most people dream of the familiar. Very few can dream of things they have never seen or imagined.
Distance was not a hinderance to his activities. Extensive memory banks allowed his vehicle to store all hyperwave communications while he was unavailable. ALEXUS acted as if their vast interstellar separation was no obstacle to his control and so far, there were no issues.
LONG-SHOT was in an area beyond Rockytop. To conserve precious resources, the vehicle had shifted to a 'low power' mode some time ago. A few calculations showed that any scheduled maintenance or repairs could easily wait for his next decanting.
It was a simple matter for him to launch the ready deployment pod. What patience he still maintained evaporated quickly as he waited for programming to complete on the second pod. Finally it was ready and launched to join its companion.
He checked a display, running through his chilldown canister's program cycle. Requesting double doses of the recommended medical gasses only took moments. He laughed when he saw that it would be almost seven years before he would be awake again.
As if that mattered when one is frozen.
Quickly he changed into another sleeping jumpsuit. Moments later ALEXUS reported that the canister was ready for him to enter.
Touching his chin, he felt hair that should not have been there for a week.
I've just been playing up until now. I think it's time to get serious.
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