Chapter One

“Disengaging AB drive now,” Karlsen said dramatically as he pulled back on the chrome plated lever. “A momentous day for us all,” he added as the AB drive powered down with a deep hum that reverberated throughout the entire ship. The central viewscreen seemed to shimmer as a multitude of stars suddenly swam into focus around a yellow sun that looked uncannily like Sol. It seemed odd as there was no sensation of movement or deceleration, just the throbbing hum of the drive and the appearance of an alien star system.

Silence fell as everyone on the bridge of the Aesir stared at the spectacle before them in awestruck fascination.

“A great day for Hyman-Penzak, commander,” Howell added, as though everyone needed reminding who had funded the three month expedition. He had taken a cursory look at the yellowish orange disc of Tau Ceti but had shown no outward interest, instead returning to the display of numbers scrolling up on the screen of his monitor.

Mahoney glanced briefly towards Science Officer Graeme who raised her eyes upwards and gave a slight shake of her head. He grinned in solidarity as they were obviously thinking the same thing.

More than likely, Howell was already calculating how much revenue Hyman-Penzak stood to earn from claiming this new Earth and pilfering its resources, just as they had done on dozens of worlds in the Sol system.

“Estimated time until we arrive at Midgard is one week,” Hoffman announced with a boyish grin.

A wave of relief washed over the crew as the enormity of their achievement suddenly dawned on them. Laughter and applause broke out, accompanied by whoops of delight and self congratulation.

“We did it, we actually did it!” Graeme said ecstatically, throwing her arms around Mahoney’s neck.

“That’s a strong grip for a Martian, Graeme,” Mahoney said mischievously, playing upon the age old prejudice that ‘off-worlders’ were somehow physically inferior to Terrans, a prejudice that had been proved wrong time and again during the Interplanetary Olympics and other major sporting events. The truth was that now, with the proliferation of genetic manipulation, the inhabitants of the far flung colonies of the solar system were just as physically robust as their ‘old world’ cousins, who were disparagingly known as ‘Dodos’ amongst the colonies, after the flightless, clumsy birds that became extinct in the seventeenth century.

“Sending the quantum communication back to Mission Control Phobos now,” Dunajski announced as she tapped away at her keypad. “Let them know we’ve arrived safe and sound.”

“Funny to think we’ll be on Midgard by the time that message gets to Phobos,” Mahoney said as he stared at the sun-like star on the central viewscreen.

Graeme nodded in agreement. “It’s like releasing a message in a bottle,”she said. “But it’s the best system we’ve got to date. Of course, we could have run a piece of string twelve light years long with two yoghurt pots on either end. Maybe that would have worked better.”

“What’s a yoghurt pot?” Mahoney asked, but Graeme just grinned and shook her head, turning her attention back to the blazing glory of Tau Ceti.

“Congratulations crew,” Karlsen announced in his clipped Germanic accent. “I believe this calls for a little celebration. Dunajski, the champagne please.”

Dunajski turned her violet-gold eyes to the commander and nodded once, rising from her seat and striding from the bridge with all the grace of one of the extinct cats of the African savannah. Soon she returned with a bottle of champagne and several plastic glasses which she handed out to everyone, her exquisitely proportioned face portraying an inner calm that only artificials seemed to possess.

“Mahoney, are you partaking?” She asked in her precise, almost autistic way, tilting her platinum blonde head to one side and offering him a glass.

Mahoney took it without a word. He was damned if he was going to say thankyou to a machine, even one as beautiful as Dunajski. That was the problem. They looked human, they imitated human emotions and mannerisms, but inside there was nothing, only cold, hard logic and blind obedience to their masters. He had seen that first hand during the Miner’s Rebellion, when the company had sent in arties to quell the unrest on the outlying colonies. Several had been attached to his section and Mahoney would never forget their chilling ruthlessness and sheer brutality towards the colonists. There was no appealing for mercy, no quarter given, just a job to be carried out for the company.

So much for Asimov’s First Law, he thought as he watched Dunajski pour the frothing champagne into his glass. She glanced at him and smiled, but she wasn’t fooling him with her fake emotions. He knew that she would crush his skull like an egg without a moment’s thought given the right command from the right person. Blind obedience to the company. That was why he didn’t like her and that was why he disliked Howell even more.

Mahoney took the glass without a word and turned back to the view screen. In a way Howell was even worse. He had sacrificed his humanity to become a corporate drone, a ladder-scaling yes man for Hyman-Penzak. At least he had a choice to become that way, unlike Dunajski who was merely following her programming.

Mahoney grimaced bitterly as he swallowed his champagne. That had been the company’s excuse. The artificial persons who had carried out such wholesale murder and brutality in the rebellious colonies had only been following orders and so it had been Mahoney’s squad and others like them who had shouldered the blame. The company had got off Scot-free, while the grunts who had been sent in to deal with the rebellion got the blame. Shit rolls downhill. Always has and always will.

“We’ve got a lock on Midgard,” Graeme announced with barely restrained excitement. “First images coming onscreen now.”

Again everyone looked towards the Aesir’s central viewscreen while Graeme synchronized it with the image on her monitor. A pale blue disc gradually grew larger, jumping up in increments as Graeme increased the resolution of the ship’s outboard scopes.

At first it was a hazy blue point of light, just like the images that had been seen from the telescopes back home, no different to the hundreds of potential Earths which had been discovered already. However Midgard was different as it was one of the few worlds which had displayed a biosignature, tell tale signs in the atmospheric composition that meant that it harboured some kind of life. And not only that, its atmosphere was startlingly similar to Earth’s; the nitrogen / oxygen balance was almost identical, varying by only two percent in the oxygen content. Its temperature range was similar to Earth’s, a little cooler if anything, falling well within the range of Tau Ceti’s habitable zone, the narrow band of opportunity around a star where liquid water could exist and temperatures were optimal for life. It had a mass of around one point two times that of Earth’s, meaning that anyone from Earth walking on Midgard would notice the increase in gravity, but would soon get used to it.

They would have to, Mahoney thought grimly. This was a one-way trip, they had no choice now.

A collective gasp filled the bridge as the tiny world came into focus for the first time. White wisps of cloud circumnavigated a serene globe of deep blue seas and mottled green continents..

“It looks just like Earth,” Salcedo, the softly spoken Chilean technician muttered.

“Definite vegetation cover,” Graeme said as she increased the resolution yet again. “I think we can safely say that we are the first people to set eyes on life outside of our solar system. God only knows what we’ll find down there.”

“Well if the arties have done their job properly, hopefully we’ll find our base,” Mahoney quipped with a sidelong glance at Dunajski, but there was not even the flicker of a reaction from her, despite the fact that he had used the derogatory term ‘artie’ instead of artificial person or AP to refer to her kind..

“Earth two point zero,” Hoffman said quietly as he looked with awe at the hypnotic globe in the viewport.

The first nanoprobes had arrived several years previously, following the breakthrough made with the Alcubierre drive by Martian scientists, which effectively allowed a spacecraft to surf space-time without actually moving by creating a warp bubble around itself. The main problem had been the phenomenal amounts of energy required to warp the fabric of space, that was before some bright spark had found a way to tap into zero-point energy from the quantum vacuum.

The patents for the drive were immediately snapped up by Hyman-Penzak, the multi-world mining and processing conglomerate who wasted no time in manufacturing the first interstellar nanoprobes.

Although communication with the probes was one way and was limited to short bursts of binary code, quantum communication meant that short, simple messages could be sent at faster than light speeds, taking mere weeks instead of years. Graeme had once tried to explain quantum communication to Mahoney, but he still could not grasp how it could possibly work. It was something to do with pairs of identical twin particles, one positive and one negative. If you separated the two, no matter what the distance was, if you tweaked one, the other would react almost immediately, seemingly in contravention of Einstein’s law.

Following the success of the Tau Ceti probes an unmanned drone ship was sent to prepare the fifth planet, now popularly known as Midgard, for a semi-permanent colony. A base was to be established by the crew of first-gen AP’s ready for human habitation, but whether they had been successful or not remained to be seen as all communications with the nanoprobes had been inexplicably lost.

“Have you picked up the beacon yet, Graeme?” Karlsen enquired, voicing everyone’s apprehension.

Graeme pursed her lips and shook her head. “Nothing yet, commander. I’ll keep trying.”

Mahoney scrutinised the mysterious continents and islands, the brilliant white polar caps and familiar clouds on the world before him and he felt the cold grip of fear and excitement in his bowels. Whatever was down there, no matter how mundane, would seem incredible to them. Night after night he had lay in his bunk trying to picture what the lifeforms would be like. Would it be a world of giant insects or huge reptiles like prehistoric Earth? Maybe it was a world of plants and nothing else.

The scientists back home had ruled out any possibility of intelligent life as no radio communication or signs of an advanced civilisation had been discovered, however that did not rule out the possibility of sentient life entirely, a prospect that was both profound and exciting.

“Just a moment,” Graeme said, pressing her palm against her earpiece. “I think I have something.”

She tapped her fingers lightly against the screen of her monitor and a single flashing light appeared on the surface of Midgard in the viewport. “Just there. That’s the base, but there’s something odd.”

“What’s that?” Karlsen prompted.

Graeme looked up at the commander.”If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that they were broadcasting a distress signal.”

“What?” Karlsen leaned forward for a better view of Graeme’s screen.

“Not only that, it appears to be encrypted.”

“Who the hell would send an encrypted distress signal?” Hoffman asked.

Science Officer Graeme shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it isn’t a distress signal. It just seems a little odd.”

“How about the nano probes,” Karlsen enquired. “Any sign of them?”

Graeme shook her head. “Nothing yet, but I’ll keep searching. Maybe they’ll throw some light on what has happened, if we can find them.”

Howell rose from his seat and scrutinised Graeme’s monitor with interest, leaning against her console with both hands.

“I’d like to take a look at this myself if you don’t mind, Graeme,” he said with a terse smile. “Maybe I can throw some light on what is going on.”

“Okay, no problem,” Graeme replied affably. “I’ll ping over the coordinates now.”

***********

“Two minutes to touchdown. Get your best speeches ready people,” Hoffman announced over the buffeting roar of wind against the hull of the lander. “Remember, no foul language otherwise history will never forgive you.” He gave a broad grin, his jaw working feverishly as he chewed on a piece of gum.

“Concentrate on what you’re doing Hoffman,” Karlsen warned. He was sat next to him in the cramped module, in the co-pilot’s seat, his eyes darting back and forth over his monitor. “We want to be the first living humans on Midgard if possible.”

“Roger that,” Hoffman responded, returning his attention to the controls of the craft.

“Altitude nine one two zero metres,” he added. “Preparing to fire retros.” He reached up and flicked at some switches above his head.

There was a deafening whoosh as the retros kicked in and Mahoney jolted forwards violently against the restraints of his seat. Howell was sat opposite him, eyes squeezed shut, looking pale and nauseous, as though he were about to throw up any second. His jowls trembled with the violent vibration and deceleration of the landing module, but gradually the descent slowed and Howell took several deep and grateful breaths, swallowing hard to stem the wave of sickness that had engulfed him.

Beside him sat Dunajski, completely impassive, her curious violet, gold flecked eyes staring straight ahead, blinking occasionally.

Why did she even bother blinking? Mahoney wondered to himself. It wasn’t as though she had to, it was just programming to put her human colleagues at ease. He looked down at her ample breasts, heaving against the fabric of her jumpsuit as she imitated the action of breathing. She didn’t have to do that either, he thought with growing frustration. He hated the artificiality of her kind and he also hated the fact that he was finding her increasingly attractive.

Dunajski caught his eye and smiled pleasantly, just as her programming demanded, but Mahoney averted his gaze, staring up at the padded wall above her head.

“Preparing for touchdown,” Hoffman announced over the comm. “You should see this it’s incredible.”

Mahoney craned his neck, but from where he was at the back of the module all that he could see was a patch of blue sky through the section of viewport over Hoffman’s head.

There was a sudden lurch followed by the whine of the module’s engines powering down.

“The Eagle has landed,” Hoffman quipped. “We wish you a pleasant ongoing journey and hope that you use Hoffman airlines again sometime.”

Karlsen shot the pilot a withering glance. “Enough, please Hoffman.”

Hoffman muttered an apology and everyone sat in silence as Graeme released her restraints and turned her chair to face a monitor set within the module’s bulkhead. Her fingers darted over the touch sensitive screen and a series of ghostly blue graphs and charts sprang into life over the miniature holo-screen set into the console, indicating Midgard’s atmospheric composition and temperature. “Everything seems stable, oxygen at twenty two percent, external temperature is ten degrees. Extensive vegetation, very similar to that found in Earth’s temperate regions. No signs of animal life, but that’s hardly surprising as we’ve probably caused a stampede of every animal in a five kilometre radius. Low to medium readings for methane. No sign of artificial pollutants. Background radiation levels at less than two millisieverts.”

“So is it safe to go outside?” Mahoney asked.

“As safe as any alien planet can be,” Graeme replied.

“So who’s going out first then?” Hoffman enquired.

Dunajski turned towards Karlsen. “As commander of this mission, surely it should be Karlsen.”

No one had any objections to the suggestion and everyone voiced their approval. Karlsen, by nature a quiet and unassuming man merely shrugged and made his way to the module’s airlock where Graeme checked over his environment suit and helmet.

“You have to wear this until we’re sure what is out there,” she explained. “We don’t want you catching some deadly strain of alien influenza, do we?”

“Extremely unlikely,” Karlsen responded, his voice sounding tinny within the confines of his helmet.

Karlsen climbed down the access ladder into the module’s cramped airlock and everyone watched the video monitor intently as it tuned in to Karlsen’s helmet camera. He gave a few turns of his head to show the pristine white walls of the airlock. “Everyone getting that?” His voice came suddenly over the internal speakers.

“Looking good Commander,” Hoffman replied. “Cycling the airlock now.”

There was a faint pop and hiss as the main door opened, flooding the airlock with air from the alien planet.

Karlsen panned his helmet around to allow the crew to see the world for the first time and what they saw brought gasps of astonishment.

“Jesus, it looks just like Banff National Park,” Hoffman said with awe. “Are those pine trees over there?”

“Certainly looks like it,” Karlsen replied after a long pause. “I’m stepping through now.”

An expectant silence fell as Karlsen descended the ladder of the module, finally stepping from the last rung onto the surface of a new world.

For a long moment the only sound was Karlsen’s breathing over the speakers and the crew exchanged a few puzzled glances. Finally the tension became too great and Howell spoke into his mic. “Is everything alright, Commander?”

“Yes, yes. Everything is fine,” came the distant reply. “It’s just...it’s unbelievable.”

“What is it? What can you see?” Howell prompted.

Again there was a pause before Karlsen spoke again. “I think it’s best you come see for yourself.”