Dominion

Dominion

Scott McElhaney

Prologue

Hawke floated slowly through the open hatch between the two captain’s chairs and took hold of the steel guidance bar over the empty seat.  He spun cautiously over the center command console and adjusted his leisurely course to plant himself securely into the high-back chair.  He wasted no time securing the shoulder harness to the lap belt, then glanced over at the mission leader seated to his left.

“The fuel dump is complete,
Shores,” Hawke said, loosening his harness by two notches as he tried to get comfortable, “Not a single drop of jet fuel remaining on this bad boy.”

“And the reactor?”

“All six fuel rods set at 4.68 and there are green lights on all the self-monitoring systems.  I brought both batteries online and checked the emergency back-up systems while I was aft,” he replied, “I’d say we’re good to go the moment NASA gives the go ahead.”

Hawke
gazed out across the lunar surface displayed before them.  While the moon may have been barely three miles beneath the Pioneer, it seemed much closer from their selenocentric orbit.  If Hawke hadn’t seen the status readouts, he could have believed the Sea of Tranquility lay merely a few meters beyond the curved windshield.

“Beautiful, isn’t it, kid?” he said, “To think that we still haven’t s
et foot on that rock since 1972.  Over sixty years, and yet here we are about to make history again as we circle past the Apollo 17 landing site.”

Meriwether
Hawke looked over at the grey-haired man seated next to him. Casey Shores; an aircraft mechanic who would eventually learn to fly the very choppers he repaired through a negotiated career change at reenlistment.  Then later, after reenlisting in the Air Force for a third stretch, he somehow managed to secure a job shuttling around much of Washington’s elite, including two trips with the Vice President.  As luck would have it, somebody important pulled a few strings when Captain Shores finished up his last tour, ensuring the man would have the honor of co-piloting two shuttle missions to the International Space Station. 

F
inally, in April of 2031, Captain Casey Shores would find himself called to a quiet suburb in Ohio on a curious mission to accompany four Homeland Security Agents, a dozen police, and three scientists from Pasadena.  At the time, it made no sense to him why an astronaut would happen to find himself inside a hangar bay at the Kent State Airport accompanied by three scientists from the Jet Propulsion Lab.  While he used to be a mechanic and a helicopter pilot, none of these credentials qualified him to assist in investigating a “bomb” confiscated from the garage of a nobody. 

Meriwether
Hawke had been seated on a rickety folding chair wearing handcuffs the first time he met Shores.  The police had already spent an hour questioning him and since he didn’t feel the need to talk, they turned it over to an old guy in a NASA jacket.  He could clearly see that the aging man had no idea what the object on the pallet behind him actually was.  The three scientists circling his creation however appeared to fully appreciate his creation for what it represented.

“Where did yo
u get all the lithium ion batteries, kid?” Shores asked, “Clearly those came from Nissan and judging from how clean they are, I’d bet you ripped them from a bunch of vehicles in a car dealership.  I’d also bet these guys already know which dealership it was.”

That was the
first of many times that Shores would call him “kid”.  He completely understood when people avoided using his archaic first name.  After all, not since Lewis and Clark had anyone ever heard of a person having the first name Meriwether.  So instead of referring to him by his short last name, Shores chose to dub him “Kid”.  He couldn’t be sure, but even now he was fairly certain that Shores has still yet to ever call him by one of his given names. 

“That’s the question you have
for me?” Hawke asked with a snicker, “You’re presented with a mysterious object that generates its own powerful gravitational-reflex field, and you want to know where I got the batteries? 
The batteries
?”

Hawke
’s question brought a moment of pause to the sturdy man.  One of the unnamed scientists, a bespectacled Asian woman, peered over toward Hawke while suppressing a laugh.  Her smile encouraged a return grin from him.

“What’s it do
then, kid?” he asked, resuming his mindless pacing in front of him.

He sighed, then
turned his attention over to the two policemen standing near the hangar door.  It was now quickly becoming apparent to him just how serious his predicament really was.  The presence of Homeland Security should have been his first clue, but it somehow never hit home until the moment he saw the assault rifle hanging from the policeman’s shoulder.  One of the police officers returned his gaze, then turned away quickly as though refusing to bear witness to an “accidental” homicide.

“It’s a non-working prototype of a very powerful engine,” he said, drawing the attention of most of the people in the room, “Oh
, believe me,
it works
, but not the way I obviously had intended.  It needs a couple adjustments.  For instance, if you were to give it more powerful long-term energy source such as maybe a nuclear reactor
and
if you enlarged that gravitational ring by at least a thousand fold, you could theoretically propel an object at… well… I’d guess the speed could technically be limitless.”

“It’s supposed to be
some sort of
engine
?” Shores asked.

“It
is
an engine, Shores,” one of the scientists on the other side of the hangar interjected, “It’s actually amazingly simple for being so complex.  With the gravitational field this thing created and sustained, I see no reason why it wouldn’t work as he suggests on a larger scale.  Using intense gravity as a mode of propulsion in space is nothing new on a purely theoretical scale.”

Looking back on the day he
became “Kid,” he recalled that it was also the day he first received confirmation from a true JPL scientist.  He was told, more or less, that a college dropout had indeed discovered the highway to the furthest reaches of the galaxy.

Now he was faced with the trial
run, seated next to one of the coolest and most knowledgeable astronauts in the field.  And who was Meriwether Hawke?  Meriwether was merely a twenty-seven year old “kid” who spent the last two years refining and rebuilding his invention to the specifications required in order to launch a two-man test ship from the moon to Neptune in a fraction of a second.  If it worked, the names Casey Shores and Meriwether Hawke would become the pioneer names in the field of interstellar flight – thus the name of their ship.

“Kid?”
Shores said, startling him from his reverie.

“Yeah?”

“I’m lowering all the window protection shields.  You ready?” he asked.

Hawke
smiled, then nodded as he returned his attention to the moon that was slowly disappearing behind a thick metal shield.  Soon, his view was obscured completely by an eight-inch wall of steel.  Even the circular side portals were now concealed beneath sturdy metal caps intended to protect the ship’s integrity against the unknown.

“I know it’s a bit late to ask, but
say we overshoot this or just blow the engine and need a rescue… how long can we survive up here?” Hawke asked.

Shores
turned to him with a look of pained confusion.  The creases in his brow were many; formed from a lifetime of worry, questioning, and random events of bewilderment such as it was this time.

“I’m hoping you’re just trying to ruffle my feathers, especially since I’m relying on your expertise on this particular run.  Do you
really believe there’s a chance of overshooting our mark or blowing the engine itself?” he asked, reaching down and switching on the central view panel.

“No.  I personally
believe all the specs are accurate and that we will end up about a quarter-million miles from Neptune’s usual path.  But at the same time, I also know that we’ve only tested two miniature versions of this and only one probe of comparable size,” he replied.

“And we
’ve only recovered one of these,” Shores finished, “The probe.  If you have something to say, kid, say it now.”

“You misjudge my inquiry, old man!  I’m asking about that point-
one-percent chance of failure.  What happens if that miniscule percentage sneaks up on us?”

He switched on two more instrument panels, then turned to
Hawke.

“If we overshoot this or end up dead in the water near Neptune, we have about four weeks to live.  If we can’t get rescued within those four weeks, you and I are going to be the world’s first guinea pigs when it comes to deep freeze cryogenics,” he replied, “We’ve got two
emergency cryo-pods to hide in and if you find that thought in any way comforting, I’d like to remind you that 95% of all cryo-pod revival attempts have been unsuccessful.”

“What are you
implying?” he asked.

“I’m
not implying anything.  I’m stating a clear truth that you’d better have your facts straight before I slam the gravity bar forward and hit the ‘go’ switch,” he replied, “There are no life rafts on this ship, kid.”

One

Meriwether
Hawke awoke with a startled gasp.  That sudden intake of breath instantly turned into a wet throaty cough.  He lunged forward, coughing heavily against the irritation in his throat.  He rolled from the bed to the floor, gasping and wheezing as he coughed up a slimy mixture of blood and neon blue gel.

Hunched over
a mirrored black floor, he continued to retch up more of the bloody gelatin.  After what felt like an hour, the violent urge to clear his airways finally began to abate.  He wiped his mouth on an unfamiliar striped sleeve, spitting out the last of the bitter slime. 

He
sat up and leaned back against the side of the bed, closing his eyes, and savoring his ability to breathe freely now without irritation.  His mind drifted to the gel on the floor, recalling that silver coffin of a cryo-pod he had recently braved.  It wasn’t an easy task to willingly submerge himself into a tub of that slippery blue gel.  But as Shores had so kindly pointed out, they had less than two hours left of breathable air and not a whisper of hope on the horizon.  He could either suffocate or he could risk an unlikely resurrection via the unreliable cryo-pod.

A door opened somewhere.  He could hear the soft pats of bare feet on a hard floor.

“What are you called?” a gentle voice rose from nearby.

Hawke
looked down at his hands, then at the wet sleeve he had wiped his mouth on.  The hands before him were his own.  A two-inch scar still marked where he’d once gashed has palm open on an old swing set.

He slowly
rose from the floor and looked across the unfamiliar bed to a bright doorway.  A small female figure was silhouetted against the brilliant lights of the corridor beyond.

“Do you understand?” she
asked, her voice barely audible, “Do you speak the language of the Cheronook?”

He moved
cautiously around the bed, being careful to avoid the mess he’d made on the shiny black floor.

“
I didn’t think you’d ever find us,” Hawke replied after clearing his sore throat, “Casey and I attempted to compare the stars to all our available charts, but we couldn’t make any sense of where we were.  We definitely couldn’t have been within the local group anymore.”

He took hold of the metal railing at the foot of the bed when he discovered how shaky his legs were.  He couldn’t
discern if the sudden weakness he was experiencing was from exhaustion or hunger.

“I am called Kashuba
.  I come to you on behalf of the Shomani to serve as both an interpreter as well as an evaluator,” she said, stepping into the room and greeting him with a cautious smile, “What are you called?”

Her face was draped now in a blanket of yellowish light as the door closed automatically behind her.  She
was very pretty for such a petite and fragile looking woman. If it weren’t for the creases near her eyes and mouth, he could almost mistake her for an adolescent.

“I’m… my name is
Hawke,” he replied, confused by her question, “Meriwether Hawke of the Pioneer, ma’am.  Surely you know who I am if you came after our ship and rescued us.”

“I did not
rescue you and I did not come after your ship, Hawke,” she replied, “Is ‘Pioneer’ the name of your land or the is it the name of the ship?”

He
caught his breath, feeling a sudden sinking inside.  Her questions confused him momentarily.  He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to make sense of his current situation.

“Why would you think I come from a land called ‘Pioneer’?  That’s the name of my ship. 
There’s no land called Pioneer.  Where are you from?” he asked, “As a matter of fact, where are we right now?” 

He looked around the room, taking in his surroundings
for the first time.  The floor resembled black glass.  The bed beneath him was very basic, but without the side railings or equipment usually found in a hospital room or medical lab.  The dim lighting in the ceiling cast a dreary yellowish hue across everything in the room.

“We are in the
Shomani land of Hollodale near the capitol.  For the time being, you remain here as a guest and an ambassador,” she said, “This is an uncommon honor, so I must ask you; Do you accept the position of guest and ambassador or do you refuse under the known Laws of Cheronook?”

She approached him
slowly as she spoke her puzzling question.  She held out a gold circle bracelet that was broken open on a hinge as though offering him an open handcuff.

“Where is
Shomani?  Or Hollodale, for that matter?  I don’t recognize many of these things you speak of,” he said, “Are you from Cherry Nook?”

She took a step back and
examined his expression more intently, lowering the golden cuff.

“Cheronook.  You are certainly Cheronook
, the same as me,” she explained, “Cheronook law forbid us from accepting refuge or sanctuary from the Shomani, but I’m recommending that you accept this honor today.  The Shomani are the ones who saved your life.  They found your ship passing through our system and spent many days towing it back and figuring out how to safely bring it here.”

“Wait
a moment.  Are you claiming that this isn’t Earth?” he choked out, “But you’re clearly human.”

“I am Cheronook and this
world is Rain,” she said, gesturing around, “Please answer my question so we know how to proceed.  Will you accept the honor of being a guest and an ambassador?  The Shomani wish to meet with you now that you are awake and alert.”

He dropped his face into his hands, massaging his temples with his fingertips.
  He pondered her words, questioning the possibility that an alien planet could have somehow brought forth intelligent life identical in every way to humans.  He understood enough of biology to realize just how impossible those odds were.  Then suddenly he looked up at her and nodded.  Perhaps, he realized, that this was still the same Earth he came from but he returned to a significantly later date and at a different stage in the evolutionary process.  He wouldn’t get the answers he needed however unless he cooperated with her and the mysterious Shomani she referred to.

“Yes, I would be honored to be a guest of the
Shomani,” he replied.

She smiled, then
presented the gold cuff to him.  She held it open, nodding toward his right arm.  He held out his hand and watched as she then proceeded to clasp it together on his wrist.

“The
Shomani have been watching our progress and the most honored Demigod Orlo is anxious to meet the first Cheronook to reach one of the outer planets,” she said, taking his hand in hers, “Come and I will take you to the chamber of the Demigods and there you can feast while you regale them with the tale of how you were able to leave Rain undetected.”

Suddenly, he got the feeling that he was going be less an honored guest and more of a curiosity in the hands of some unknown enemy.