Dear John
by Mark Suszko

Chapter One

“Two ships in the night” was never a more appropriate description of what happened. Only the ‘night’ in this case was deep space. On the face of it, it wasn’t as impossible a task as you’d think: intercept a slower-than-light colony ship with a faster-than-light model, drop off some electronic mail, bring back the responses. But the details matter. And the people matter.

It wasn’t ever a question of would I volunteer to go on this mission; I was a descendant of one of the Argent Venture’s crew families, from the branch that stayed behind when the colony was launched, well over a hundred years ago. That fact, rather than my meager spacer skills, got me the interview for joining a crew of people much more worthy than myself. I was just okay with EVA suits and zero-gee. I knew which end of a wrench to use. I could run a kitchen without needing a medic. But nobody was saying I was the best or most important crew-person for this mission. I had an open mind, as did Captain Janos during my interview.

“You’re not the best candidate, Kory, by far - no offense - but I’d like you there when we talk to them, anyhow. Crazy, I know - we could probably just lie and use another person, claim they’re related, but that’s not who I am. I believe in family decisions. And maybe they do, as well. So you will be our ‘ambassador’ on the mission, liaising with Argent Venture when we get in range.”

“How long will we have, captain, on the fly-by?” I asked her. She grinned, recognizing I had applied for the job without reading all the briefing materials, but seeing I at least had grasped that we would never get to dock with my extra-distant relatives.

“It will be more than one fly-by, Kory; we’ll Jump the ship ahead of where they will be flying past, do several burst transmissions for the short time they are in radio range, then Jump again, hopscotching them over and over, and wait for them to read, react, and prepare a reply. The Mission Plan says five jumps. But we’ll have to go to a port and refuel after two, which puts a delay in the series of encounters. I plan to do the last two jumps, staged out of their original destination at Barnard, so they will be getting closer, rather than giving us a tail-chase. Actual encounter time, we’re guessing at half an hour, each. They’re moving pretty fast, and they won’t be expecting us on the first encounter, may not even be actively listening. Overall mission time for us, about a month and some, call it seven weeks. You mind being on the ship that long?”

“I can manage that, Captain” We shook on it and I was in.

Our ship took a few weeks to modify for the trip, and I spent much of that time aboard, trying to acclimatize myself to its spaces and quirks, until it felt, if not like a home, at least like a familiar workplace I could navigate with eyes closed. I got to know the other crew; Loren, the skinny and brittle Astrogator, Gus, the garrulous Chief Engineer, Salli, his sarcastic backup, and Franx, the shortest spacer I’d ever seen, who ran Coms and Sensors. Captain Janos sat in the Piloting seat with helm controls but mostly she monitored a lot of automation and made the executive decisions. My role and rank was somewhat undefined, they called me a “Mission Specialist” to my face. And perhaps, “supercargo” behind my back. But we all got along. Salli found lots of maintenance jobs for me to help with - scutwork, to be sure, but I didn’t mind being busy, contributing in some way, and the work was necessary to keep the ship safe and happy, so there was no shame in it.

Finally, the Hermes-2 was ready for launch, having added extended fuel stores and more extensive communications and sensor gear than I’d ever seen on a civilian ship.  We motored out on reaction drives to a safe distance from the orbital base and Janos commanded the hyperspace jump that flicked us out some distance ahead of the Argent Venture, along its projected heading.  We aimed for a spot a few light-days distant from the encounter and once we popped back into normal space, Franx set up shop and began blasting out our pre-recorded messages and beacon signals on a loop, adjusted for Doppler shift. I assisted Franx by being a second set of eyes on the sensor displays, but really, the automation did all the work for both of us. Hermes-2 could have done this job sans crew, except for the need for putting a human at the encounter for a conversation that could not happen using mere light-speed communications.

The first encounter was inconclusive: there had been no answer back from Argent Venture in the time window we had in open space, before her impressive velocity carried her out of reception range, tearing off into the dark. That was to be expected. With her doing  about four percent of light speed to our measly fifty or so kilometers per second, the encounter time was roughly a minute before message delay and the power-to-range limits of our gear took her out of range. But I did record something for the burst transmissions we sent:

“Hello! I am Len Kory, one of your descendant stay-behind cousins from Earth, and you’re getting this message from our starship, the Hermes-2. In the time since you left, technology breakthroughs have happened: we now have ships that can make it to Barnard’s Star in only two weeks. We have a data dump of history, news, and technical information we want to give you; it follows this burst transmission and we’ll repeat it over the next five encounters we have. The first thing we wanted to tell you though is that you only have a few weeks to decide if you want to make a course change to Ross 154, because Barnard’s system is already colonized. Ross 154 has been scouted by our ships and has a habitable world that could be made to work for you instead. Before you ask, no, there is no way for our ships to rendezvous- the relative speeds are too great, and the best we can do is park some distance ahead of you and hand-off messages in the brief window we have as you pass by. But in those messages are some technical data that can help you improve your drive efficiency and give enough propellant margin for you to bend a course to Ross, if you choose. Either way, you’re not totally alone out here, you are remembered, and we are here to help. Next encounter is nine days from reception of this message. Hope to hear a recorded burst message from you then!”

The second encounter was where we expected to get an initial answer. Hermes popped out into normal space days ahead and we listened on every frequency band in radio and laser for a signal from the approaching Argent Venture. The ship flashed by without a whisper, but we did get a bit of a scanning pass of her with the fancy sensor rigs on Hermes. Not a lot of detail to be had from so brief a glimpse, from so far away, but with some processing enhancements, Franx did have one conclusion for us.

Franx posted a visual in the wardroom while explaining: “I can’t say they’ve received our message, but I can say their drive is cold - turned off. It’s no longer burning for Barnard, but neither is it bending vectors for Ross. They have some time before the course change has to initiate, so maybe they are still...weighing their options?”

“Can you tell if they’re alive?”Asked the Captain; “Any readings on their energy or other evidence? A lot of things can happen to a sub-light ship after so many years...”

Franx was noncommittal. “There is enough heat output to suggest a viable interior temp. There isn’t enough detail to say more at this point, one way or another. I’ll pick over the data for the next week we’re in jump, to see if I can tease-out anything more definitive, but right now that’s all I’ve got.”

Captain Janos nodded. “Until we know anything else, we’ll continue as planned. One more jump ahead to refuel at Barnard’s and we’ll resume the encounter passes. Maybe they needed more time to think about it.”

“Not much more though”, said Loren the Astrogator. “Their decision window to implement the course change is closing, whatever they decide. If they stay on their original flight plan, it’s almost time to turn over and start deceleration, takes a couple of years to kill their speed enough for solar capture at Barnard’s.  If they aren’t burning again in two weeks, on the new course, they are committed to the old one...” Loren paused.”...Or none at all.”
    
Days later, Franx came to us during chow, in a dither. “There WAS an answer! They ARE alive!”   We didn’t get it at the time because it was very weak, not from their main coms system, and not in the right format, plus the Doppler on it really made it hard to pick out, but the computer did find this text...” Franx showed us.

“Mutiny. Revolution. Help.” was all it said.




Chapter Two

“What The Hell???” was essentially what we all were saying. Debate raged for over an hour as to what exactly it meant, and what we should do about it.  One general consensus was that our reams of compressed information we’d sent along with our greeting, had somehow triggered some sort of internal fight over the response, and the people nominally in charge of coms were unwilling or unable to communicate about it.  We had no idea which of two factions had taken control, and what their intentions were.  Franx suggested how the message was sent  -  by tertiary systems at lower power - might mean whoever sent it was sneaking the message out, and not in charge.
 
The captain turned to me. Shit.

“Kory, these were your people, tell us something about their history. Why did they go, what did they believe? What did they hope to accomplish? Anything that could give us a hint as to what’s going on over there now?”

“I’m not a historian, Captain, I have some basics. They were New Puritans, utopians who didn’t like how society was going on Earth. Smug about it, too. They had money; much of the ship building was self-funded, but not all. The government chipped-in some, near the end. The family joke about it has always been that us Korys and our kind were so unpleasant, the government paid us to leave, in the slowest possible way.  Jump technology was just a dream back then, but propulsor drives were understood, well enough to make some big ones, reliable ones.”

I continued the briefing, such as it was. “The Korys - those Korys - were unwilling to wait for science, but were fine taking a long-ass sub-light trip with their own kind. They led the exodus by liquidating all their terrestrial assets to start the construction, They hollowed-out a suitable asteroid, made it a working habitat first, then added the engines and left. There was some debate between them, um, us, at that time; some asked why bother leaving for a new system when their artificial one was already here and working.”

I shrugged a little, the story getting personal. “My family branch was one of those. We were happy to stay out in the belt, independent but in range of help if we ever needed any. And didn’t see the point of a journey most or all of us would not live to see to completion. I am descended from those stay-behinds. They pruned us off their tree.”

Maybe the colonists think that makes me anathema? It would be ironic if I was the cause of all this, I thought.

“I will let them make the next move, let’s get out there and listen for them, per plan”, said the Captain.

The listening came easy this encounter: the colony ship coms signals were blasting out well ahead of them, like headlights in a fog, out to several light-minutes. The message was looped and we got it three times before we lost it again. We also had customized a second set of receivers, and computer filters, in case of another secret message. Franx was ready on both setups, and our gear gargled it all down thirstily. We sat around on the edge of our seats, waiting for the decode and analysis.

Whoever was in charge, was quite adamant about it in the twenty-page essay answer to our previous hails. And sitting next to Franx, I was the second person to read it. Franx studied me as I read it.  I was shocked by the violent tone, the threats, the bluster. It made me ashamed of my own name, though these people’s beliefs were so far from my own, they might as well have been a different species. They’d read our briefings about the aliens at Barnard, how we had come to a peaceful agreement and had good relations, and how the aliens would consider the colony’s arrival a provocative act. The colonists were unimpressed. The rest of it went on in the same vein for a bit more, finishing with bluster and threats and something about destiny.
    
I turned to Franx.“Franx, anything from the - ‘other side’? Our secret second messenger?” Turned out, there was.  I read that one to the crew and the Captain, and Franx never said a word.

“Mutiny and revolution is our cargo. The leadership intends to rule wherever they go. They laugh at your history books talking of cooperation with aliens. They aim to not just settle Barnard but to be the only dominant species on it. We the minority faction have tried to moderate them, but failed. They reduce us by the day. In retribution, we have destroyed the Propulsor Drives. Let us pass your worlds, without slowing, and fly on into the darkness to leave you in a future of peace.”

We all took a vote. We reported the colony lost beyond recovery. It was better than asking the aliens to put up rocks for it to smash into. Sometimes, dead branches get pruned.