Ulysses: The Exodus -- Part The Second

Ulysses had looked big on paper – the plans, when spread out, covered two boardroom tables. But the real thing was so much bigger.1

I stood at Observation Deck Four, watching some techs modify the sensor arrays on the aft part of the ship. Even from here I was only looking at a small part of the ship – the side of its hull, covered with plates, rivets, windows and the like. We could only fully see its size when it launched – it was so big that all the techs were armed with maps and directional comps to help them clamber around the thing more quickly. They even had radios to yell at each other from opposite ends of the ship.2

“Colonel. Good to see you again, sir.” Lieutenant-Commander Janet Davies saluted, and stood by his side.3

“This is different – a sailor saluting an airman?” I grinned as I shook her hand. 4

“You are my commanding officer now, sir.” She looked at the ship. “Isn’t it magnificent?”5

“Yes, my exact words when I first saw it.” I flicked through a status report absently. “And this ship is the key to all our futures.”6

“Yeah …” Davies sounded awed by the prospect of even getting such a huge thing into orbit. “Why wasn’t this constructed in orbit, sir? Or near the asteroid belt, for instance?”7

“What, so some Russkie could go and blow it up with an ASAT nuke? It’s much safer here.”8

‘Here’ precisely meant ‘here’ as in the middle of the Nevada desert. The surface was now a raging sandy mess, but underground, there was plenty of space for emergency bunkers, and construction areas. Nukes couldn’t penetrate all that rock and soil, so we were protected – unless an earthquake chose to have a jolly over our heads, then we would have been severely in the shit. But thankfully, there had been no major drama yet.9

Launching would entail powering up the lower thrusters and opening the huge bay doors constructed into the surface ground and then it was a matter of powering sublights and leaving Earth’s gravity pull. Once clear of the Moon and our Presidential pickup, acceleration would power us out the Solar System, after which the interstellar drives would pickup and off we were, heading out toward our next home, leaving the one we fucked up behind.10

If anything, we would at least have learnt from this – I hoped.11

The launch took place at 0400 Zulu on the 4th of September 2120. 12

Just before it happened, we all gathered outside the ship, on the loading ramps, and held a couple of minutes’ silence for all those we would be leaving behind, dead or alive. 13

Judging from the rosters, Ulysses would be home to 153,678 people. We were leaving behind at least 400,000 people on Earth, most of them too sick to be moved, or near death. And then there were the people who’d wanted to stay behind and help those who couldn’t help themselves, valuable men and women sacrificing themselves for a lost cause.14

Earth was mortally wounded, but there was the chance she would heal herself. A long time coming that would be though – and humanity would likely have died out on Earth – leaving the second evolution of humans to take its place. If there was a second evolution. Who knew, Earth could come to be ruled by gorillas next. 15

The command bridge of the Ulysses was large and shiny, brand new, looking like it had just rolled off the lines. A large command and control chair, obviously meant for the captain sat in the centre of the room, on a slightly raised dais. Consoles were arranged all over the place, screens littered with information, radar pictures, IR readings, barometers, timestamps, and all sorts of technogibberish only the seasoned techs could understand.16

For some reason, it reminded me of one of the old shows – Star Trek, I think they called it. 17

The officers hurried to their positions, and powered up their stations. 18

All over the ship, its cabins and special holds were all being filled with people and stores respectively. Four squadrons of XT-VIIs and XT-VIIIs were being loaded into the fighter bays. Ulysses being part warship, there were weapons platforms that needed manning, and equipment for the Marine contingent to be stowed.19

For sixteen hours the Ulysses became a giant hive of activity.20

When the all-clear sounded, people strapped themselves in. Some clutched prayer books, other mumbled to themselves; still others looked straight ahead as if daring something to go wrong. I saw a navigator finger his rosary rapidly as the thrusters began to thrum.21

As the thrumming reached a high pitch, I knew we were ready.22

“Open the doors, Pilot.” 23

Anyone looking down on that patch of desert would have thought the earth was splitting apart at the seams. 24

A line appeared in the ground, and then two halves pushed away from each other, sliding up and away, forming a brand new land feature, and revealing a yawning gap not unlike some fault lines I had seen in my time.25

Out of this gap, emerged Ulysses, a giant monolith of a ship, spanning seven football fields, the ark in which the remnants of humanity fled.26

Ulysses rose, higher, launch thrusters creating mini-tornados on the surface. Ascending into the atmosphere, I could see the remnants of New York, Denver, Washington as we got higher and higher, and then, with the thrusters firing at full power, we left the Earth’s orbit. 27

A few of the officers were teary eyed, the others stoic, but I knew they all felt the way I did. We were leaving our home, the planet upon which life had been born, evolved and become what it was now. Humanity, the miracle of evolution, had risen and fallen over the span of several million years, and now we were leaving our one true home – to go … God only knew where.28

*****29

FOUR MONTHS LATER30

“Commander.” The summons was from the corpsman who manned the comm station. “President Fitxpatric is requesting to meet with you sir, when you can come down.”31

I nodded my acknowledgement, and continued tapping away at a holo-keypad in front of me – data appearing in the holoscreen in front of me, its green luminescence reflecting slightly on my face. 32

Four months from the Ulysses’s launch, and I had to say – things were going fine. There had been my official promotion to Commander – a convenient rank that blurred the lines between the USAF, Marine, and Navy corps – of the Ulysses. The crew and passengers had settled in well, considering. I was expecting squabbles over sleeping spaces and the like – and wasn’t disappointed, but we could iron everything out in the end. 33

The civilian passengers were composed of 137,280 people from all over the world, a truly multicultural gathering, each contingent with their self-appointed leader. By far, the most numerous were the Americans, of course, with the President leading them. Next came the Russkies, with the prune-faced Foreign Minister Vladimir Dysvenhyov at their head – and not to forget the Chinese/Asian community, with one of their last members of government – a lowly Secretary of Education, Joanna Gingschow Lin. The civvies were all quartered in the rear holds of the ship – sort of like a giant hostel, complete with numerous kitchens, medical infirmaries, washing areas, and all that sort of stuff. I was even pretty sure there was a 7-Eleven down there too. Or was it a Wal-Mart?34

I led my crew, who made up the remainder of the Ulysses’s inhabitants. They habited the forward sections of the craft – I myself had my rather too-large cabin/office just down the hall from the CIC (Combat Information Centre) and the bridge. 35

Lastly, the President and all the other governmental types were in the middle of the ship, with all their aides and the like. A good thing most of the civvies had skills we could use – the government recruited some, forming an ad hoc legal system – and we picked up some extra engineers and techs, and some more pilots for the XTs. 36

Swishing away my holoscreen and keypads, I stood up, brushing down my uniform and straightening a non-existent crease. 37

“XO,” I motioned to my XO, a tall, thin African-American named Loki Duanes. He had been under my command during the last parts of the war – and I’d yanked him into the Ulysses project before he got himself whacked in an XT. “You have the conn.”38

“Yes, sir.” He saluted and moved over to the command chair, as I exited. 39

I made my way through the maze of corridors that was the Ulysses, all the while wishing to hell we’d thought to install elevators. Boy, would it be even better if we had some beam transporters … My ass. No one on Earth had gotten around to successfully dematerializing and rematerializing matter in one piece just yet – perhaps they would’ve, given some time, but of course, the people back on Earth were too fussed surviving than messing with materializing molecules. 40

“Mr President?” I knocked on the door, straightening my collar. I’d recently had new uniforms made for the crew, with a badge denoting the Earth symbol with the Ulysses flash – I thought it was about time we started acting like one unified crew, not a bunch of personnel from all walks of the military – and a new uniform was the best place to start. 41

“Come in, Commander.” The President was reading a report that looked like a status log. 42

“Perusing the ship’s logs, sir?” I asked, as I sat down.43

“I get bored.” Boy, he must have been joking – I musta had four hours of sleep per week after we’d launched. I’d hardly gotten one thing done when something else presented itself. Well, I corrected myself - that was what Presidential aides were for.44

“Well? You asked to see me,” I said, reaching for the glass of wine conveniently on his desk. 45

“We’re about to leave the Solar System – correct?” He asked, pulling the glass away from me and taking a sip himself. 46

I scowled mildly at the bottle of wine nearby. “Yeah – we’re two weeks away from the outer edge – crosssing the, what’d they call it …”47

“Heliopause.”48

“Yeah. That thing. After we clear that, we’re out into deep space – after one more final go-over, we activate the interstellar drives and hope for the best.”49

“What’s our first destination, then, Commander?” asked the President, sitting back, and looking at me over the rim of his glass.50

“An exosolar planet in the Centauri Cluster - #34432XI – otherwise known as Vega 2.” 51

“Habitable?” 52

“Scans by Voyager V in 2050 indicate presence of base materials needed for survival – quite possibly we’ll need protection and artificial environments at first, but who knows? Most of the data was garbled on return – something to do with intermittent ion storms.” 53

“Very well, Commander.” President Fitxpatric leaned forward and smiled. “Now I’ll leave you to get back to your duties, and I have a meeting with the government.”54

I grinned and left him to it, making my way back to my bridge.55