THREE

Research Vessel Ganymede

Day 548

In his quarters Callum sat slumped in his chair, legs jutting out ahead of him, motionless except for one finger that absently tapped his leg. He stared past the holodisplay, his eyes seeming to look through it to the bulkhead beyond, then to space outside and the planet that rolled underneath him. But even Chiron seemed to be as distant as Earth, as though he were floating in a starless black void.

The ice clinked in his glass of contraband bourbon which he had successfully stowed aboard ship, shifting as it slowly melted, and the noise brought Callum back from the vast nothingness to his small, gray quarters. His eyes settled again on the last line of his wife's transmission which read:

I'm so sorry.

Callum knew this day was coming. He knew it was coming long before he had volunteered for the Ganymede mission. The founding of Chiron, the remnants of the human settlements and the part he and Ganymede's crew had played in unveiling it to the people of Earth had made all of them "instant celebrities" according to her. So she felt that now would be a good time for her to leave him even though she knew he was still two years away from returning home.

Not really. Hyperdrive will get us home a lot sooner than you think. Not that it matters now.

They had both known they weren't as happy as they should be. It wasn't her desire to have children and his fervent rejection of it. It wasn't his desire to be at SciCom's beck and call, constantly stationed at locations all over the world, while his wife earnestly desired to plant roots. That alone should have been enough to end it but they kept on for whatever reason, unable to separate, as if some powerful life magnet had forced them together and refused to let them drift apart.

Strangely, Callum didn't find the separation announcement cowardly of her. She had never been vindictive. It wasn't her nature. He understood the reason why she chose this moment to leave him. She reasoned when Callum returned there would be no shortage of suitors for him to choose from. His newly acquired notoriety would make sure of that. She simply didn't want to be the obstacle that kept him from starting a new life. If she left him now, the wounds she opened today would hopefully be healed by the time he made it back to Earth.

Callum grabbed the glass of bourbon and finished it off with one determined quaff. He began to sense the heaviness lift slightly in the room. The empty pit in his stomach quivered as if life was pressing itself against him, like water trying to force its way through a cracked dam. Or maybe it was the bourbon. It didn't matter.

He couldn't help thinking back to what had caused him to fall in love with her so many years ago. He let that old comfortable, peaceful feeling course through him one last time. Despite what she had done, he knew he could never be angry with her.

A solemn, wistful smile appeared. Even in her "Dear John" letter she was able to show him compassion.

Rhona, Koushik and a crew of scientists steadily worked on the research bridge. Rhona had given orders to temporarily power down most of the probes so they could begin to get a handle on the probe data that had been transmitted. GORT, if it were capable of it, would've probably been grateful to be given the chance to catch its breath.

Rhona had broken up her research team into three groups. One group contained a geologist along with a xenobiologist and her assistants. Another group had an archeologist and a cultural anthropologist who continued to study three dimensional computerized recreations of the settlement structures.

Rhona, Koushik, and four other scientists, made up the third group. Their job was to sort through the newly declassified historical information sent by Command about the Unity mission. They hoped to discover if the Unity survivors did indeed fracture into separate cultures and, if so, why they did.

But that was going to take quite a while.

"I'm surprised Dr. Cook hasn't attempted to force his way onto the bridge," Rhona said to Koushik. "I would have thought the curiosity would have been enough to make him restless."

"I haven't talked with him for a couple of days. I've tried to contact him but he's blocked his terminal and doesn't answer his door." Koushik shrugged. "I guess he just needs a break."

"We all do." Rhona twisted her shoulders, trying to relax her tense back muscles. "It seems like an eternity since I had some decent sleep."

"Ah, but there is so much to discover," Koushik said, turning back to his terminal. "Never was that more true than right now."

Rhona rolled her eyes and noticed the psychologist looking at her with an amused look, ruefully shaking her head. Rhona gave her a silent, knowing smile.

What can you do? She seemed to say.

Two hours later

Morgan, Nwabudike.

Thanks to the Morgan logo emblazoned on nearly every prominent building in his settlements, Rhona's team did not have to dig very deeply to find information on him. In fact, a few business remnants started by the then-powerful CEO still existed in some capacity on Earth's African continent, though the corporations had drastically changed over the decades and the "Morgan" name had been mostly relegated to the dustbin of economic and corporate history.

Industrialist; Driven; Pleasure-seeking; Zest for life; Narcissist. These were a few of the words the psychologist had used in her preliminary psych report on Nwabudike Morgan, the primary and most important contractor of the Unity project. He was a brilliant economic opportunist and his gifted ability to raise money combined with his wealth of resources had made Morgan Industries the obvious, but somewhat reluctant, first choice to fund the project.

The hesitancy to use Morgan Industries was clarified by a number of publications from the time period along with a few surviving inter-corporate memos from businesses that had been subcontracted by Morgan Industries. Numerous accusations of bribes paid to project auditors, construction companies, and UN officials tarnished Morgan's otherwise squeaky clean project record - perhaps too squeaky clean.

Even more interesting was a lone report that stated Nwabudike Morgan had disappeared days before the Unity launch and was not even present at the launch ceremony. Considering how Morgan's craving of the spotlight and his larger-than-life personality should have placed him front and center during Unity Launch Day, his disappearance was bizarre to say the least.

Looking at the computerized recreations of Morganite buildings on Chiron's surface, most on Ganymede quickly deduced where he had ended up.

\o/

Silos! That was the word Hendrix had been trying think of to describe these "Galileo" structures. He zoomed out and twirled the fully formed dimensional image of the main settlement, stripped away of the mountains that surrounded it. Half a dozen of the silo structures, astronomical observatories in reality, projected from it like perfectly formed fingers.

Probe Fifteen was his responsibility. Dr. McKibben had left only four probes operational for the time being and Fifteen was one of them. Lucky him. He spent most of his probe-watch pondering his usefulness as he regarded himself one of the more dependable members of the research crew. His value was more of a curse than a virtue, always being singled out to perform the drudge work. He craned his neck to cast an envious glance at McKibben's three research teams across the bridge.

Yeah. It stinks being good at your job.

Twisting his mouth into a mock pout, he slumped back into his chair. You would think that discovering Chiron's soil was a virtual breadbasket would have gotten him a more prominent position on one of McKibben's research teams.

Probe Fifteen waited motionless for instructions as a real-time feed displayed the image of an entrance into a two story building. Koushik's bright idea to switch to underground sonar had revealed many settlements sporting underground areas but nothing as elaborate as "the tunnels" had been. Thanks to him the probe controllers had even more exploring to do.

Most of them were unremarkable: storage rooms, warehouses, basements underneath living quarters. There hadn't been much to see save the occasional personal artifact haphazardly left behind. Hendrix wondered if they had been left behind on purpose like a small beacon saying "I was here" or if they were simply discarded like so much refuse. Either way, most of the crew found them as interesting as the settlements themselves.

A message blinked on Hendrix's display indicating that Probe Fifteen was ready to proceed. Hendrix commanded the probe to move through the entrance.

There was an empty elevator shaft just inside on the right and Hendrix ordered Fifteen to descend into it. As there was no light in this underground space, Hendrix had been waiting patiently for the probes solar batteries to fully charge. Probe Fifteen now had six full hours to operate in complete darkness.

Lucky me.

Fifteen backed into the elevator shaft and slowly descended, its powerful twin floodlights activating as the sunlight gradually disappeared. The elevator had been lodged on the second floor which Hendrix found slightly odd. Usually when power was cut elevators slowly sank to the bottom floor for safety reasons.

Maybe they don't on this messed up world.

Fifteen exited the elevator at the bottom of the shaft and moved slowly down a long featureless hallway, the floodlights garishly highlighting the closed in walls. A minute later probe light spilled into a small square room, illuminating everything as clearly as one of Chiron's suns. A fine layer of dust covered everything. The room was featureless just like the hallway that preceded it save for a long table that ran the length of the back wall. On and around it were ancient terminals, computers and machinery of all shapes and sizes. Hendrix had seen different versions of this room present in most of the other settlements.

Another data storage dump of some sort.

Hendrix sighed, running a hand over his face and rubbing his weary eyes. Per procedure, he made the probe do a slow turn of the entire room for recording purposes. A few minutes later Fifteen was done and Hendrix instructed the probe to head back to the surface. As the probe began to back away from the far wall it automatically shut down its powerful floodlights to save battery life.

That's when Hendrix saw the tiny colored lights.

He froze. He focused intently on the spot making sure the tiny twin lights weren't just spots in his eyes. As Fifteen continued slowly backing away Hendrix temporarily lost contact with the lights in the pitch black room. He grunted and began slapping controls to stop the probe in its tracks. Hendrix then ordered it forward again at a snail's pace, his face only a couple of inches from the virtual image.

A moment later the lights appeared again. He touched a couple of controls. The floodlights activated again but at a reduced intensity, just enough light to show him exactly where the bright spots were coming from.

There it is. That large mainframe looking thing on the left.

He maneuvered the probe to where it hovered directly in front of the two small lights. One was green and the other was yellow. He brightened the probe lights a tiny bit more. Just below the lights were words written in what appeared to be a Cyrillic alphabet. Hendrix gave a quiet groan.

Damn. Why does it have to be Russian?

It took Hendrix a moment to fumble through the symbols for a translation (he hadn't done that well in mandatory language studies) but finally concluded the words translated into "Primary power backup."

A power backup, he mused. These lights probably indicate that the backup is still working. That means these terminals could be turned on!

Hendrix spent the next several minutes maneuvering Fifteen around the power backup unit searching for the switch that would turn it on and, hopefully, the terminals themselves but he couldn't find one.

Frustrated, he sat back in his chair, jaw clenched. He wasn't about to give up on this. There had to be a way to turn this thing on. No one would design something like this and tuck away the primary activation switch.

A thought came to him. He did a quick search in the Unity archives, much more helpful now that Command allowed access to a lot of old information, and discovered that a few Russian designed power backups from decades past had been manufactured with a foot pedal power activator and not the standard recessed panel flip switch. Hendrix returned to Fifteen and slowly dropped the probe to near floor level.

Bingo.

There, on the right side, was a long thin foot pedal that ran the length of the supply unit. But another problem presented itself. The probe had no feet to speak of and its primary appendage was not placed in a position where it could trigger the floor switch. And Hendrix couldn't rotate the probe on its y-axis without possibly losing control of the probe itself.

But that doesn't mean I can't knock something over.

Fortunately the power backup was placed close to a table littered with small implements. Hendrix took a moment to look over his options. There were only two. One was some sort of antiquated laptop computer device, much bulkier than the ones Ganymede crewmen were equipped with. Another was a rectangular metallic toolbox with a handle on the front.

The laptop device would be sacrificed first since it was larger. Hendrix touched a control and Fifteen's clawed appendage slowly extended into view. He maneuvered the probe and a moment later the arm was resting on the right side of the artifact. Hendrix tested the resistance, satisfied that the object would move without breaking Fifteen's arm. Hendrix manipulated the gravity field emitters and the probe quickly swung to the left, sliding the artifact off the table.

It struck the floor just short of the foot pedal and shattered into several large fragments with such force that it startled Hendrix. The equipment was flimsier than he thought.

What a piece of garbage! Hendrix fumed in an effort to mask his frustration. With equipment like that it's amazing they got off the stupid launch pad!

Taking a moment to settle his nerves he swung Fifteen back to the table and his last hope, the metallic tool box. He moved the probe toward the box, appendage still extended, and tested the resistance on the box. It was much heavier than the ancient laptop.

There may still be tools inside.

This was going to require some careful maneuvering. Too much force on the toolbox and Fifteen's arm would snap. Then he would face Dr. McKibben's wrath; Ramirez, too.

Hendrix straightened himself, blew on his hands, rubbed them together and hunkered down to his task. For ten excruciating minutes he nudged the toolbox into position with careful manipulation of Fifteen's emitters, alternately tapping the left and right side of the box with the probe arm to get the position just right.

Finally he was ready. He was too focused to notice the beads of sweat rolling down his back. He placed Fifteen's appendage on the right side of the toolbox and tested the resistance, mentally calculating the force he would need to launch it on the right trajectory. His eyebrows clinched, worried that it would be too much for the probe arm to handle.

But he had to know. He whispered an apology to Probe Fifteen then shifted the gravity balancer. The probe seemed to hesitate for the slightest of moments, as if protesting, then the world on the screen spun wildly as Fifteen launched the toolbox off the table.

Hendrix's heart shot to his throat as he fought to keep control of the probe now spinning out of control. His arms were a blur, hands flying over the controls. Slowly, the spinning world outside the probe slowed and finally Fifteen came to rest. Hendrix let his head fall back on his chair and he stared at the ceiling, letting out a long slow breath. The gravity shift had been powerful enough to disrupt the probe's gyroscopic control center for a moment. Hendrix had barely avoided a most expensive accident.

He focused on the display and his heart sank. The probe displayed nothing but darkness. Then a thought came to him. He turned on the floodlights and the screen revealed the probe was now facing the hallway and the elevator entrance beyond. Fifteen had come to rest facing opposite to the way it had entered. Hendrix's breathing stopped.

He touched a control and Fifteen slowly spun around. All along the back wall terminals were lit and lights were flashing as power once again flowed through long dormant power cables. On the largest of the terminals a display had been activated and a long list of sentences in a multitude of languages appeared. Earth languages. Hendrix panned down the list until he found one he could decipher.

"Traveler. We are the survivors of the United Nations project Unity, a colonization mission which departed a dying Earth in the year 2060. Please enter the activation code 'PLANET' to gain entrance to our historical datalinks."

Hendrix's hand shot to his mouth to stifle the gleeful roar of laughter that exploded from his lungs. He looked up to see Dr. McKibben, Koushik and a few of the other scientists giving him puzzled looks.

Oh, I am so good at my job!

\o/

Earth Space Command

Perth, Australia

Day 550 of Ganymede mission

The lights in the spacious apartment home brightened to their pre-programmed intensity as Wesley Garland walked in after another long day of meetings. He tossed his stylish leather bound PDP onto the plush sofa before heading to the bathroom to splash water on his face and change into more comfortable clothes.

After changing he made his way to the kitchen and pulled out one of his last pre-fab dinners. It wasn't a particular favorite, but he was especially hungry tonight so it mattered little. He touched a button on the side of the container and set it aside as the tray automatically began to cook the food inside.

While waiting, Wesley passed the time sorting through personal messages received while he was out. He hadn't bothered to wear his PLink for days because of the numerous logistics meetings he had attended. He couldn't return a call even if he wanted to at this point. He became exasperated when he came across the pleadings of particularly demanding associates, either ignoring the message or deleting it entirely.

No, you bean counters won't get your pound of flesh tonight.

Wesley quickly ate his meal, poured an after dinner drink, and made his way to the sofa and the PDP lying on it. He navigated his way to the latest Ganymede reports regarding the seven settlement styles of Chiron. It was nearly unanimous among the scientists that the Unity survivors had split along certain ideological lines. Sociologists would be writing about this for years. The research crew had painstakingly gone through all the known Unity crew members as they believed it was they who were in the best position to be seen as leaders when the Unity reactor crisis became known. Cross-referencing that with the crew psych profiles and linking that data to the construction styles of the planet structures they were narrowing down who were the possible leaders, or influences, of these factions.

Gathering Chiron's early human history through one antiquated terminal on the surface was impossible since no one could land on the planet. The Ganymede crew were brainstorming on how to get their remotely controlled probes to access the old datalink terminal to confirm their findings. And what had happened on Chiron? Everyone felt the constraints of time and now concern was growing about the backup power supply itself. Just how long would it last?

Wesley began scrolling through Chiron's leader profiles again. CEO Nwabudike Morgan was at the top of the list, of course, since he was the first to be studied. It didn't surprise Wesley that Morgan had become one of these faction leaders. His charisma along with promises to his people of unlimited economic prosperity made him an easy man to follow.

It stood to reason that Unity's Chief Surgeon, Commissioner Pravin Lal, would be a major unifying force behind the "U.N. style" settlements. Born in India, he had been a strong supporter of the United Nations Charter and had been primarily responsible for organizing humanitarian relief after the Twelve Minute War and the India Border Conflict before that. He was part of a team of researchers that made great strides in DNA repair which had saved countless lives in the aftermath or at least made life more bearable for the survivors.

Lal appeared to be a genuinely good man, a humanitarian of the highest order who loathed conflict. It was surmised that Lal was probably in the highest tiers of Chiron's leadership. Lal's primary failing was that he was a bureaucrat; a well meaning bureaucrat, but a bureaucrat nonetheless. As an idealist, his vision for Chiron may not have taken into account the simple fact that there were those who simply refused to play by the rules, no matter how benevolent the ruler.

The Spartan Federation was one such group. If any faction would have looked on the United Nation laws of Pravin Lal and his faction as an oppressive yoke that threatened their way of life it would be the Spartans. This survivalist movement came to prominence out of the decade of chaos that shook Los Angeles during the 2040's. Though they succeeded in remaining a mostly secret association they had strong political connections which were used extensively by their leader, a self-appointed colonel named Corazon Santiago. Santiago was savvy enough to get elected to the U.N. Security Force a few years before launch which undoubtedly helped get a number of her Spartans assigned to the Unity crew.

Wesley sipped a drink as he browsed through Santiago's psyche profile: superior discipline, physically proficient, incredibly tenacious. She was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Santiago also had an explosive temper which was not surprising considering her traumatized childhood and broken family of which she apparently rarely spoke of.

A damn tough woman. A loose cannon, too. No wonder her settlements looked like a spread of glorified barracks, clean and hard edged.

A tone sounded as Wesley's dinner finished cooking. He ate slowly as he read Ganymede's remaining reports which were mostly opinions and conjecture at this point. For the moment, there was no further information on the four other settlements or who their leaders could have been.

Wesley finished eating, took a long, hot decon-shower, and climbed into bed. He was very tired but the information he was reading and watching was too compelling for mere sleep right now. For several hours Wesley Garland mulled over reports looking for one story in particular that had been on his mind since Ganymede first uncovered evidence of the Unity survivors. He was looking for a report, memo, document, file...anything...involving of one very particular individual, a man that connected both of them to the Unity.