Chapter 3 – Deployment

Deployment +00 hours:03 minutes:24 seconds (First Lieutenant Banga Mission Clock)/

CMA Argo in slipstream space—en route to Harvest System

The stars in front smeared into blur and pulled themselves apart until there was nothing but a scintillating, heavenly glow. The fore view quantum-shifted into blue and the anomalous bubble engulfed the ship—swallowed it whole. The bubble collapsed. The ship was gone.

Vanished from the space-time continuum—

—into the ethereal field of slip space.

Way back in the twenty-third century, the scientists Shaw and Fujikawa developed the translight engine. It saved Earth from overpopulation, allowed colonists to spread throughout the galaxy, and brought mankind closer together. It also yanked him apart. Faster-than-light travel enabled Banga, his crew, and the like to run bombing missions on rebel bases.

Even with all these new worlds and new adventures, there was still war. Where the hell did Humanity go wrong…again?

Yep. FTL got you places alright.

The only thing Banga and his crew were getting closer to was an unknown end.

Out the view port was the abyss of an alternate dimension, somehow blacker than space, and equally lonely.

Streaming along at more than 186,000 miles per second, the crew was looking at a week-long journey. It was really impossible to tell the exact velocity of the vessel as no experiment in slip stream was ever accurate. Telemetry was always inconsistent or corrupted from electromagnetic phenomena.

Moreover, it was theorized that there were eddies or currents within slipstream, which generally gave a five to ten percent variance in transit times. You never knew exactly where you were. Only two things were certain in Shaw-Fujikawa space: Your origin; your destination—and even that could vary slightly.

In theory, you could very well be passing through a planet, a star, even a black hole without knowing it. Anything could have been the source of interference when traveling in this realm, which made navigational plotting that much more important in slip space travel. If your NAV database was not up to date or your calculations were off, there was no telling what your fate could be. You might end your slip space journey inside a supernova if you weren't careful.

At any rate though, the Argo was surely headed to Harvest.

After the jump into slip space, Brad left the systems on auto and stepped out of the cockpit. He walked past priceless equipment, ducked through short bulkheads, and weaved around tight corners. The innards of this vessel were confining. The surfaces were anything but hospitable. Hard and unforgiving is what they were. The honeycombed, Titanium-A framework of the Argo was rigid and cold. The deck plates were a thin, ferric material—electro-magnetized—enabling the crew's gravity boots to stabilize their proceedings. The walls were alive and crawling with electrical conduits, tightly-bundled fiber optics, and mazes of high-pressure lines. There was no panache to the Argo, just mechanized efficiency.

After what seemed like a session of calisthenics, he found himself in the one place he wanted to be before his ice nap: The galley. A hot meal was in order.

He definitely wasn't looking forward to cryo-sleep. No one ever did.

Sergeant Pryor was already there unpacking rations with Lieutenant Holmes watching in a nearby dining chair.

Pryor was the typical airborne crew chief: Always with a plate full of work. And he loved it. To be gainfully employed was his pastime. Pryor was one of those 'seasoned NCOs'. He liked the military. He could've retired by now, but it was his life. His failed marriages were a bitter proof to that. Life on the go doesn't supplement relationships very well. There was definitely no regret in his eyes though. He didn't mind having a lady friend now and then, but his place was in the CMA…for as long as he could remember.

He was taller than your average man, but nothing about him was very distinct, except his full head of light-grey hair. A matching, husky mustache within regs was his defining trait, aside from his love for the military lifestyle of course. He was generally laid back, very keen on his job, and very down to earth. Basically, he was an easy-going, work-a-holic.

Holmes was your typical academy grad—blue to the core…lean, fit, and ready for anything. He still had that Basic Training buzz cut—a shallow mat of jet black hair. His uniform—utility or service dress—was always the sharpest of the bunch, with crisp creases on the sleeves. Mostly, Holmes was rigid and formal, but found himself getting along well with the crew ever since they scooped him up out of training a few operations back. His superb job knowledge on starship defense weaponry won Banga and the others over well. He was just the man for their team.

But most importantly, Holmes had what Brad held in high regard...what Brad needed from all his men: Their military bearing. When first names became sir and smiles turned into game faces.

The two were apparently well into a conversation so Brad decided to let them be and tried finding other food.

"So what," Holmes asked Pryor. "You just always know who you're dealing with? You can keep eye contact and never look at rank?"

"When you're in as long as me you can just kind of smell your own, you know?"

"Well, practice makes perfect, my Daddy always said."

"That's a good analogy."

"Thanks."

Brad couldn't help but hear them. It was true. After a while, you just knew who was who, even if you had no idea who they were. Maybe it was the way they carried themselves, how fast they walked, the quality of personal possessions they owned, the way they talked. Many things told a story about someone. You just needed a practiced eye, that's all.

Time in is all that mattered.

But Brad felt like he had too much time in. Too much of it wasted. The last few years were just hectic and only benefited the government. A drop here, a drop there. Catching a wink of shuteye just to get ready for another mission, or spending just enough time in a far away city to refuel or rearm. He'd been everywhere and back in a minute, it seemed. Reach, Earth, Mars, Jericho, Eridanus, Lambda Serpentis, Biko, Mamore, Harmony...The days melded into one and the years became simply a blur. All this travel and business; accomplishing everything, yet attaining nothing. He was glad he was so short—only one year.

No more flying, no more missions, no more time spent away from what mattered the most. After this mission it was smooth sailing, which made him realize just how serious the mission was. He had to play it perfect—no screw ups. He would keep a strict watch from here on out. He didn't like being the 'military guy' to his crew, but this time, it'd be for their own good. After all, they had families too…people that were waiting on them; that loved them.

"Heads-up, fellas," Banga addressed the two in the galley. "Commander's call in the cryo chamber in fifteen. I have some things I need to go over with everyone."

"Roger that, boss," said Pryor. "I'll tell the others." He reached over to a wall-mounted intercom. "Drop your socks and grab your—"

"Ahem," Holmes uttered.

"Meeting at cryo in fifteen!" he finished with a nonchalant smirk.

After their meal, the three made their way to the cryo-stasis chamber. The room definitely had the largest ceiling in the ship besides the engine room. To put it in practical terms, it was probably to ease the vertigo of waking up. Mild claustrophobia was not uncommon before, during, or after cryostasis. People just needed their space sometimes.

A functional aspect of the high ceiling was that these pods were mounted on rails. In the event of a ship emergency such as fire or hull breach, the pods were jettisoned into space, providing enough life support until a reasonable search and rescue op could be performed.

Everyone was gathered near Banga's command tube and waiting for his instruction.

Dufraine, with his typical strand of milkweed hanging out of his mouth, stood perfectly at ease, leaning up against Brad's cryotube. He only let it hang there when he was nervous. Brad picked up on that. But nervous he rarely was. He usually just chewed on it or nursed the sweet nectar from inside of it. Dufraine was cool and calm—a fitting personality to say the least for a demolitions expert. He started his career on a UXO team (Unexploded Ordinance). He was the guy that defused live bombs for a paycheck. Insane…or…insanely calm. He was slightly shorter than your average man with ratty, brown hair—barely within regs, and opaque-black eyes that knew your life story but gave nothing away in return. He had small and dexterous hands despite his stocky build. Those ten, nimble digits saved God knows how many lives from high-order detonation.

Brahm was usually just as calm as Dufraine, but twice as arrogant. He was your typical communications guru—the know-it-all wise guy. He was of average height, the most muscled of the group, and his hair was dark and cropped short. He always gloated, and had quite the way with the ladies.

As usual, Selonke was right by Banga's side. He was a tall man, wore glasses, had curly-brown hair, and was happily married with children. His job was congruent to his moral fiber—the navigator—always faithful and true. He always got them through the worst of things.

These men in front of Banga were his lifeline. The fact that they were in airborne status alone meant they were the best of the best; trained for missions like this. But more: They were his best friends. Most people go through life with only one, or none. He had five. The fact that they could remain such good friends and still do the job they did, only meant they would go places. How ironic it was now.

"Alright," Banga started. "We just need to go over a few things and be prepared for what might happen." He drew a deep breath. "Dufraine, how's our armament?"

"A-okay, sir. Full inventory and all fail safes are green."

"Excellent. Selonke?"

"Course is true. We should arrive in about one hundred forty-four standard hours, give or take about fourteen."

"Good. Pryor?"

"Everything is ship-shape. I could let her run herself."

"Let's not get that complacent, shall we? Holmes, how are you with the weapons?"

"Good, sir. No problems there. We're good to go."

"Very good. Brahm, we need to go over first contact scenarios—friendly and hostile. Do you have any?"

"That's a good question. I can't be sure."

"Why?"

"Well," he opened with an awkward smile and chose his words carefully, "There is that language barrier."

"Can you send a greeting message? Like a…welcome stranger?"

"Can't be sure," Brahm answered as diplomatically as possible.

"Can you try at least?"

"I can always try," he replied with a customary smile, "but I don't think High Command intended for us to talk to these aliens. It's actually unlikely they'll respond or even be able to hear our transmission. When we," he said with his hands pointing back and forth to everyone, "talk to each other…UNSC ships…we already know what frequencies to use and what encryption to generate, so on and so forth. There's also a dozen other possible factors in play like polarization techniques, phase shifting, modulation, multiplexing, encoding, the size of the digital word, companding methods and PCM techniques, you get the idea. The variables are practically limitless."

"Hey, what about a purely analog signal?" asked Dufraine. "Can't you do one of those?"

"Say what? Purely analog? All waves, when they are sent, are analog. It's just that inside the analog carrier wave is an embedded signal with who knows what inside it. That's why FLEETCOM and DISA periodically send out heavily-encrypted messages on the REDNET containing the latest ciphers and configurations to all comm. officers. Everyone stays updated."

"Okay, but I'm talking about the simplest form of it, with none of the fancy mumbo-jumbo you just said. Just one signal, nothing else, with….you know….a simple hello, or maybe some mathematical language that equates to hello. I saw it in an old movie once."

"That's kinda hard to generate being that we always radiate with modulated and encoded signals. The only way to send a simplex wave like that would be to use no modulation and it would have to be an extremely low-frequency signal, like anywhere from three hundred to thirty-four hundred hertz or what we call 'voice frequency'."

"So, do that."

"Do you realize the size our antenna would have to be?" he disputed. "Not only that, but we'd have to be awfully close to their ship to even send an unmodulated transmission to them because it would require a tremendous amount of power to send it. If we got that close, they might think our intentions are hostile. So, to make this happen I'd also have to bypass a lot of automated security measures and change some parameters in the equipment, but let me ask…why?"

"Well," Dufraine conjectured, "It's the easiest way for them to understand, right? It could be done, right?"

"Yeah…" Brahm said with apprehension. "…but again, there's still a one-in-a-million chance they could hear it, let alone understand it. For all we know, they could very well be communicating with gamma rays or something. Their technology could be light-years ahead of ours...see what I'm sayin'? Plus, they'd have to have one hell of a band pass filter to be able to hear every frequency out there. That, and I personally don't want to send a purely analog message," he said folding his arms and leaning back.

"Why don't you want to?" asked Banga.

"…'Cause it would make us look stupid."

"Make us look…stupid?"

"How would you feel if you were the representative of your race and the aliens looked down on you right from the get-go?"

"Why would they think we're stupid, because it's an unencrypted signal? This is one of those first contact scenarios so why would we encrypt anyways?"

"No, not for encryption. I'm not even saying we encrypt. Just…you know…make it a little challenging for them. Sort of make us look good."

The rest of the squad stared off in divergence, dubious. Banga intervened and broke the silence. "Let's just do analog."

"I'm telling you, we'll look like shit bricks. Picture it this way: There's a very smart man in front of you and you're trying to talk to him, but you speak the same language. Wouldn't you look very stupid if you sounded out every syllable to a guy with a doctorate?" Brahm stood taller and cupped his hands around his mouth for emphasis. "It'd be like us saying 'Hey! We're still living in the stone age!'"

"Alright," instructed Banga. "I'm in charge. We'll do it your way and if that doesn't work, you'll go with the analog. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir," Brahm tactfully complied.

Banga stormed over to his tube, manually opened the door, and took a seat inside, mumbling something to himself while Brahm laughed under his breath. "I swear I can't believe the shit we argue over sometimes."

Master Sergeant Pryor strode up to Brahm after the brief scuffle was over. "So how long before we can talk to these guys?"

"Well, quite a while I suppose. First, we're sending an unmodulated, analog signal. Depending on what frequency works best out here, I'll probably have to construct a new antenna from scratch. Then, I'll have to alter the programming in the MODEM's firmware, as well as reprogram the base band equipment. That'll take a while. Then, I'm gonna have to override several warranteed filters and voltage-controlled oscillators. Maybe that'll land me an article fifteen. I'll also have to dump the keys in all the crypto gear. This is probably in one ear and out the other for ya but believe me, it sucks, and all just for a message that won't even work."

"Heh, don't sweat it man. Today, we run the military," he said indifferently and walked off.

"Yeah—" Brahm murmured rebelliously. He saw Pryor move back into the avionics bay and shut the hatch behind him. "—Whatever you say."

Banga came out from his tube and approached Brahm's side. "Hey man, I didn't mean to get short with you, John. Just work on that comm. setup in case we need it. No worries."

"Sure thing, boss. No worries."

"Do you think you can have it done before cryo?"

"Yeah, no problem."

"Alright. I'll see you on the flipside then."