Contrary to popular belief, not everyone wanted an escape pod off of the dying spaceship Earth. The UNS Unity was sought only by a fraction of those who were offered a trip to the stars. First, and most obviously, only a minority of the most daring and foolhardy were willing to escape the known comforts of the planet to become settlers on an unknown alien world. By mission launch, humanity had barely began to settle the earthsphere, with only a few piddling research or Morgan mining bases on the Moon, much less Mars, Venus, and the Belt. The Jovian moons had been visited two and a half times, including the failed Blue Crow international mission. So going all of the way to another star system with an unbreathable atmosphere, unstable environment, and unknown wildlife, was just out of the question for most people.
Next, even for those who were willing and able to pass the strict skill expectations in the sciences or social achievements in the humanities, the physical checks were just as daunting. Training for the mission took upwards of three to five years (though as time drew closer, requirements were lowered again and again to expedite the process) of grueling training. Survival courses at the Earth's poles, undersea missions at deepwater habitats including the few publicly-acknowledged installations on the Corea Strait, spacewalks in orbit, all were fair game for potential crew members. Even "off-white" non-crew colonists had to participate in similar programs, summers in tropical jungles or winters in arid deserts. Participants were expected to have the will to live and to save the lives of their fellow passengers, undergoing extensive exercises in everything from emergency first aid to basic vehicle repair to hand-to-hand combat, retaining knowledge that could be passed onto future generations of humanity's remnant.
Many were drummed out of the courses. Not everyone could dream of- nor wanted to- having the peak physical performance of Executive Officer Sheng-Ji Yang. Though nearly sixty years old at mission launch, the wizened former elite guardsman was seen jogging the entire length of the ship at both morning watch and first watch with a gaggle of ensigns trailing distantly behind. His prowess at the sparring ring was also indefatigable. Indeed, the incredible control the X.O. exercised over his body at his age drew him many admirers among the staff, especially among impressionable junior officers. That, coupled with his nearly preternatural charisma, explains how Yang was able to inspire a counter-mutiny within the Spartan Coalition during the latter stages of Planetfall, asserting his worthiness over the self-proclaimed Colonel Corazon Santiago as the true successor of the late Chief of Security Joachim Ortega.
On the other hand, Chief Science Officer Prokhor Zakharov, known to be comparatively frail, was able to advance through training through other means. Already augmented with a mechanical prosthetic for his left forearm lost to American XM9 fire from his combat engineer days along the Bering Strait, the genius scientist next outfitted his weakening limbs with state-of-the-art bioelectric leg braces to improve maneuverability and range. This was also rumors of hosting an optical overlay controlled by a subvocal implant, added after vision damage from a Fallen terrorist nerve gas attack in Blagoveshchensk during the Pan-Asian Scientific Cooperative Annual Lecture a decade before the mission.
While human augmentation was generally frowned upon by the U.N. mission planners- less so for moral reasons, but simply because of the danger of lacking advanced parts or know-how to maintain biomechanical improvements in deep space- the esteemed physicist brushed away their petty concerns by assuring that his staff was fully capable of preserving the science of cybernetics well into the future. Once during the early journey across the Solar System, a lowly ensign had jokingly asked Zakharov what he would do if his hardware ever failed while he was separated from his team, say in the field. Would that leave him helpless? The Chief of Science deadpanned to the young engineer that he would simply repurpose his own parts to build a robot to carry him out of danger, then reallocate all shirkers' lab resources towards further upgrading the steadfast machine.
Finally, many of the ruling classes were simply too busy to leave Earth. Having spent lifetimes acquiring kingdoms of land or wealth, they found it difficult to part with their precious playthings and empires of dirt to become settlers on an uncertain world. Many of them idly waited for more comfortable and exclusive future trips after the Unity mission. The more cunning ones invested hidden fortresses off the grid, in international waters, or at stable peripheral regions like Oceania, in hopes of relocating after the end. Until then, they were too captivated by running their nation-states or gigacorporations to flee, which suited the U.N. just fine- it avoided all sorts of potential legal pitfalls. Indeed, after Nwabudike Morgan had been missing from Earth for long enough to be declared legally dead, his companies on Earth fell into severe succession crises as ambitious corporate lieutenants fought amongst one another for control. In the aftermath years later, an ex-Unity Project Team psych profiler emerged to confirm that the mysteriously missing CEO had likely departed the planet. This resulted in a massive scandal as Morgan's survivors, both professional and familial, were aghast at how he had abandoned them all to fight with no clear heir. Other corporate leaders clucked and tutted at the irresponsibility, but their finger-wagging was soon interrupted by the outbreak of renewed nuclear war.
The Funder
Not many of Unity's shareholders actually deigned to accompany their investment to the stars. Leaving behind all they knew was a big ask, after all. But some independents among the hundreds of thousands of small-time big money funders of the project were determined to see it through.
Weismuller was designated Investor with the rank of Moderator on Unity. He was among the handful of those monied individuals both able and willing to go to space. While in the spirit of egalitarianism imposed by the captain they were given no better provisions or quarters than any other crew or colonist- everyone slept in cryotubes, after all- they did receive founders stock in the mission. This nebulous asset was a promise to eventually repay investors or their descendants in whatever currency would be adopted on Chiron, pledging them as members of a potential future economic elite of humanity's remnant. Of course, the United Nations took care not to promise when or exactly how this would occur, to delay the creation of such an elite, and most investors' legal teams spotted this chicanery almost immediately, thus rendering founders stock as somewhat of a joke. Weismuller did not care- he wanted to see the return on his investment, and what was due to him, regardless of the actual value in reality.
The selection committee had approved of his prior consultations with the U.N.- numerous passengers bore the same non-national identity he advised. Self-declared citizens of corporations, free trade zones cities, the Roman Catholic Church, the Red Cross, and others strode the passages of Unity as servants to no nation-state. Even more, his academic background in economics marked him as another cross-disciplinary polymath who might equally take part in settlement as an able-bodied colonist, lead colonial initiatives with executive experience, and teach Econ 101 in a frontier university built by the Unity mission one day.
His candidacy received some quibbling from members who were put off by his laissez-faire loyalties, fearing the inclusion of an ideologue. While his application stalled in committee, a letter from an undisclosed source arrived, declaring that Weismuller's convictions towards liberty were unimpeachable- he would be no thrall to monied interests nor corporate chicanery, but could teach "objectively from the heart." This anonymous petitioner's missive was also followed by a renewed round of investment into the Unity mission to the tune of hundreds of millions by the previously ambivalent Oceanian government.
With such a good-willed endorser, the committee went forward with Weismuller's candidacy. Some of its members who previously worked for the World Bank or the IMF scratched their heads at the whole affair. Wasn't it a given that econ professors would gravitate towards free market views anyway?
The Rite of Exit
By providence, Weismuller drew the lot to experience the early journey outside of a cryotube as the Unity made its way towards the heliosphere and into points beyond. He saw asteroids off the scanner and dreamt of fleets of harvester probes to finally end the resource wars of home. He bore witness to great Jupiter and solemnly looked forward to humanity one day making its way to it again, to visit all its moons and peer down the Red Spot. And he managed to meet his neighbors in peace and not Planetfall.
The command staff was generally too busy to hobnob with investors, let alone colonists. Many took Zakharov's rather cold shoulder attitude that their greatest usefulness was on Earth, and it was not the crew's duty to babysit tourists. But most everyone was familiar with the Public Affairs Officer. Hutama made himself known at every public gathering, singing praises of ship efficiency and the crew's excellence in managing the voyage, always sure to hum a few bars of self-admiration. After Weismuller had identified himself, the former legislator had immediately launched into effluent praises about the entrepreneur's former enterprises, in particular highlighting his former employer at the Eru Fund and the very generous contributions that had been spent in raising islands of the Oceanian Alliance. While Weismuller had hoped to never have to talk about his time as an employee again, preferring to speak of either the speculative future or the academic past, he had no choice but to entertain the slick Oceanian.
Hutama was affable enough, but had a tendency to allude to "special sundries" he had acquired through "officer privilege" that he was willing to part with for "future favors." In the investor's case, he hoped that Weismuller would be so kind as to lend some share of Unityfounders stock in exchange for some fine Cuban cigars from the West Indies Co-Prosperity Sphere, fermented pumpkin aqua-vitae from the northern commonwealths of the Christian States of America, or even the latest bio-enhanced strains of qat from Greater Somalia. All goods attained legitimately while on diplomatic missions, he assured, and stowed in excess luggage as per Unity officer regulation. Weismuller pretended to mull over the offer for a calculated moment, then declined Hutama's offer politely.
He also met ship's Comptroller Suzanne Marjorie Fielding briefly. The former cabinet member and hyper-accountant was embarking on her grand side project, a comprehensive audit of the entire mission's books. As an investor, even an independent small-timer, Weismuller was entitled to a meet and greet with the auditor, which turned out to be a carefully polite interview. She asked him numerous questions about his business dealings, peppering the conversation with observations of his entrepreneurial acumen, delivered dryly, almost clinical. As time went on, Weismuller detected an inkling of ulterior motive from the Comptroller, seeing the pattern of her questioning into his former endeavors and associates, her cloying interest into the exact nature of his investment into the Unity. When he attempted to turn the tables and ask the inquirer about her own background, feigning interest in the bureaucratic nature of her time as a statist working for the POTUS, Fielding stonewalled and asked even more invasive questions about his interest in the mission, digging up factoids about childhood tech projects that only a handful of friends and family back in Century City would know. Claiming he had a medical checkup, he cut the meet and greet short and bid a hasty retreat, bewildered by the encounter.
A less fraught interaction was with Chief Engineer Daoming Sochua. The officer had been inspired by Chief of Surgery Pravin Lal's regular public lectures on his team's public health initiatives aboard the ship, and led a tour of the reactor herself, endorsed heartily by Hutama and his PR team. Though a neophyte in the realm of nuclear physics, Weismuller was duly impressed by Sochua's effortless mastery of the field and boldness as she expounded about the finer details of the fusion core that was humanity's salvation. Of the extra shifts her team had labored under to make the necessary optimizations to ensure the reactor operated at peak performance (following her exact specifications, of course), she proclaimed boldly. Weismuller nodded approvingly at the use of crunch time, even as some tour members noticed that her engineers' faces soured at her proclamations. The chief's tendency to leap ahead in her exposition, skipping steps of explanation, lost many on the tour, but the investor chased on the best he could, and was enthralled by the tale even as the teller grew impatient at her audience's flagging comprehension. This was the sort of scientific genius that the mission was meant to preserve, he decided. Those who had the know-how to not only lead mankind to the stars, but the iron will to teach man to build new stars, herself.
Finally, Nathan Weismuller met none other than Captain John Garland himself. The captain took special care to meet with each member of the crew and every colonist at some point, whether prior to launch, during the journey through the Solar System, and as he pledged- one day on Chiron itself. The visit itself was even briefer than the abbreviated inquisition by Fielding. Captain Garland simply approached the investor one lunchtime at the mess hall, while the latter stared distractedly through a porthole at the infinite emptiness outside. There was no rhyme nor reason to this selection. Garland never gave one. He simply sat at the table and asked Weismuller what he saw in the mission. Taken aback by the illustrious surprise, the investor answered- freedom. A new chance for humanity to rebuild itself on new shores, shorn of the clunking, destructive systems that had sealed the species' demise. A way to combine free enterprise and scientific rationality towards building a better fate for all.
At this, Captain Garland nodded, sat back, and smiled. The two exchanged pleasantries and the conversation settled into mundanities- what did the passenger feel about the centripetal acceleration-generated artificial gravity, which Jovian moon was his favorite, how was the food. And yet, in every exchange, each sentence, Weismuller sensed a powerful charisma from the other. There was something universal that the captain embodied, a warmth that transcended the petty conversation. An innate leadership that explained why he had been chosen to shepherd the last of the human race towards Alpha Centauri. This conversation was over in less than half an hour, and yet Weismuller was left deeply impressed, and yet he could not elaborate on why.
As impressive as the crew leadership of the Unity were, they were not those who made the greatest impact on Weismuller. These would be two others who would later become fellow players on Planet itself.
Notes
Blue Crow is the city on Callisto, Jupiter's moon, from Cowboy Bebop.
I borrowed the event "nerve gas attack in Blagoveshchensk" from ChocolateTeapot's excellent character study "Poisoned Aid" and embellished my own details for it. The Fallen are a Chinese terrorist group mentioned in Centauri Dawn by Michael Ely.
Zakharov kinda has the same visual look as Doctor J from Gundam Wing, doesn't he? Well, here I made the resemblance more than skin-deep.