Waypoint Magellan Read online

  WAYPOINT

  MAGELLAN

  L. S. Roebuck

  SHADOWLANDS PRESS

  Siloam Springs, Arkansas

  Waypoint Magellan

  © 2017 L.S. Roebuck

  Kindle Edition

  ISBN 10: 0-9986090-1-3

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9986090-0-3

  1.3

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website or broadcast.

  Published by Shadowlands Press

  500 Oak Crest Road

  Siloam Springs, Arkansas 72761

  www.shadowlandspress.com

  For Cherissa

  PROLOGUE

  waypoint (n) — an endpoint of the leg of a long course; a stopping place on a journey.

  Moon Orbit, July 4, 2476.

  From Earth, Waypoint Columbus was visible to the naked eye. The largest mobile object created by man, the waypoint was nearly five kilometers in diameter and orbited the moon during the final phases of its three-decade construction. Fortunately, the project engineers had learned from the process so that they would build the next one, Waypoint De Leon, in one-fifth the time.

  Simple patterns in the grey nano-carbon superstructure conveyed a Spartan beauty, although Waypoint Columbus was not designed with aesthetics in mind. Viewports and other windows were almost non-existent, save for the spattering of skylights above the Waypoint Columbus’ garden core, located near the center of the disc-shaped structure.

  In the garden core, Admiral William James, the top-ranking military officer, addressed the gathered diplomats, politicians, bureaucrats and family members of the waypoint crew who would stay behind when the Columbus got underway.

  Crew, however, wasn’t the right word. They would soon be permanent residents.

  To support the 5,000 inhabitants of Waypoint Columbus, form took a back seat to function. Future waypoints would dedicate more real estate to the psychological wellbeing of the spacefaring citizens, but Waypoint Columbus’ primary objective was the indefinite, self-sustaining survival of man in space.

  This day, Columbus would begin its 24-month journey out of the Sol System, to its new permanent anchorage, almost a half lightyear away. Later, Columbus’ success proved man could live indefinitely off-planet, becoming the first step toward permanently occupying new worlds.

  “That humanity would someday settle the stars was destined,” Adm. James spoke smoothly, evenly. His words evoked a strong pride in those who had spent decades working toward the greatest moment in human history since man entered space a half-millennium ago.

  “Science fiction has always promised that man would somehow bend the laws of physics so we could travel faster than light. Hyperspace. Warp speed. Mass effect. FTL drives,” the admiral said. “In our great fiction, a spacefarer could reach the stars not in years, but in weeks or days or instantly. Reality allows us no magic trick, no deus ex machina that will bring us to the stars. Only the unstoppable determination that makes us human, a tremendous amount of work, and generations of patience will bring us to our destiny.”

  By the 25th century, humanity could not travel faster than light, but it was not for lack of trying. History’s best scientists and engineers could not formulate practical light speed travel: no artificial wormholes, no tesseracts, no powerful generators that could fold time and space.

  By the middle of the 24th century, the United States and her allies decided on a more practical approach to colonizing the cosmos: Project Waypoint. Using deep space probes, astronomers had already identified three Earth-like planets in other solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy. The closest planet, Arara, was eight light years away. Project Waypoint would attempt to colonize all three planets, all roughly in opposite directions from earth.

  While many politicians pushed Project Waypoint to assure the survival of humanity should Earth ever be unable to sustain life after a natural or artificial disaster of global scale, ultimately it was not fear that drove men to overcome human dependence on terra firma. Instead, for generations a new manifest destiny had gripped the world. That humanity would expand, learn, grow was pre-ordained.

  But the galaxy was a big place.

  Humans could only engineer vehicles that would travel at fractions of the speed of light (c). Most interstellar ships had a cruising speed between .3c and .5c.

  Even then, the amount of energy needed to accelerate — and decelerate — was amazing. But energy generation was no longer a problem. While unable to bend space and time, science did solve the antimatter riddle. Energy, the scarcity of which had once been the cause of great wars, was now plentiful and cheap. Antimatter/matter reactors — kept off-planet for safety — generated the limitless energy needed to make Project Waypoint viable.

  Over the course of the next five decades, humanity would build 72 waypoints, scattering them like interstellar rest stops between Earth and the three planets astronomers found to be fit for human life. Those taking the two-decade trip from Earth to Arara would have 18 waypoints to help them find the way. Most of them were built by the North American Space Alliance (a confederation of the United States and what was once known as Canada and Mexico). The European Space Alliance and the African Space Alliance built three each.

  Most of the crew who left on the initial launches would never return to Earth. It was fitting then for the waypoints to be named for the great explorers who discovered the “new world” in the second millennia. The waypoints between Earth and Arara, in order from Earth, were: Waypoint Columbus, Waypoint De Leon, Waypoint Drake, Waypoint Raleigh, Waypoint Polo, Waypoint Vespucci, Waypoint Balboa, Waypoint Coronado, Waypoint Hawkins, Waypoint De Soto, Waypoint Hudson, Waypoint Cabot, Waypoint Estevanico, Waypoint Cartier, Waypoint Gilbert, Waypoint Magellan, Waypoint Cortes, and Waypoint Marquette.

  “Since we started to record our own history, humanity has falsely believed that we were in control of our own fate. As long as we are dependent completely on Earth, such independence has always been an illusion,” Adm. James said with confidence, hands smoothing his dress blues as he straightened, the pride of the moment seeming to give him unnatural height. “Today, however, our great fiction has become reality: We are now truly the masters of our own destiny. This waypoint will guide our path.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Waypoint Magellan, January 24, 2596

  John Tyler rounded the corner at full speed, losing his balance, causing his feet to fly out from under him. In his graceless fall, the young man hit his head sharply against the cold steel wall of the dimly lit, cramped capillary corridor. He instinctively placed his hand on his head at the point of impact and was greeted with the sticky, warm welcome of fresh blood.

  He scrambled back to his feet, wiped his hand on his grey carbon polymer shirt, and peeked around the corner behind him. The tall man, Järvinen, was nowhere to be seen.

  Tyler strained to listen for footsteps, possibly the sounds of his pursuer, but heard nothing. This remote section of the waypoint, in the bowels of the environmental and life support storage tanks, was frequented by few, save the occasional engineer or technician. The only sound filling the hall was the continuous hum of air being pushed through scrubbing filters.

  Tyler squinted, looking hard down the thin capillary he’d just sprinted through. His chest heaved with heavy breathing, in part from running and in part from fear and adrenaline.

  I should have never taken the Estrella job, Tyler thought. But the
money was too good. The athletic man hoped he had given Järvinen, his new boss, the slip. Even so, he wondered where he could hide from the grey-headed man on a waypoint? Would the Marines protect him? Would they even believe him?

  It was a bad idea to leave Arara in the first place, Tyler considered regretfully. But the siren promises of earning a quick fortune trading on the waypoints was irresistible to a boy who grew up poor and who, when he was just 19, started the long journey to Magellan.

  Tyler leaned against the corner wall and was ciphering a plan to sneak back undetected to his tiny room at the Hoover temporary housing center. Would Järvinen be waiting for him at his place? Tyler never thought taking a job as a glorified dockworker for a shady inter-waypoint logistic company would lead to him fearing for his life.

  He listened again and then looked one more time down the metallic corridor, with barely enough room for a large man to walk through. The low clearance would cause anyone approaching two meters in height to frequently duck. That would slow Järvinen down, Tyler thought. Thirty meters down, a malfunctioning light flickered, but otherwise, he was alone.

  Tyler exhaled a sigh of relief, quickly turned back around the corner to continue his sprint, and ran full body into Järvinen. Shocked, Tyler fell backward to the floor, hitting his tailbone hard. Järvinen towered over the prone Tyler, and the tall man’s silhouette flickered in the broken light.

  “You’re bleeding, Mr. Tyler,” Järvinen said in a clear, eloquent voice. “We should take you to the clinic to have that looked at before it gets serious.”

  “I’m fine,” Tyler blurted. “Just leave me alone.”

  “I don’t mean to inconvenience you,” Järvinen said evenly. “I just have a few questions I need to ask to find out … what you know.” As he spoke, the older man produced a handheld weapon that Tyler immediately recognized as a common stun gun.

  “Hey, look,” Tyler said, eyeing the gun nervously, “really I don’t know anything. Just, you know, the shipping schedules and manifests. You know, because you gave them to me.”

  “Don’t toy with me boy,” Järvinen put some menace in his voice. “What did you overhear?”

  Tyler started to stand up, but Järvinen closed the distance between them, kneeling and pointing his gun at the young man’s head. “Please, don’t get up on my account. Now tell me, do you know who Raven One is?”

  “Who?”

  Järvinen jabbed the stun gun into the bloody gash on Tyler’s forehead. Tyler yelped in pain.

  “I swear I don’t know any Raven,” Tyler said angrily. “I have no idea who he is.”

  “I believe you,” Järvinen said slowly, letting the arm holding the stun gun drop to his side.

  Tyler relaxed slightly. “It’s the truth.”

  “But I can’t have you going around and telling the Marines about my threatening you with a stun gun. They’ll ask why I was harassing you and more importantly, who is Raven One. And we wouldn’t want that valuable piece of information floating around Magellan, would we,” Järvinen reasoned.

  Tyler’s confusion reignited his fear. “What are you talking about?”

  Järvinen lifted his stun gun and put two energy bolts into Tyler’s body. The young man jolted a few times, as his muscles shook him in an artificially induced seizure. Then, Tyler grew still and slipped into blissful unconsciousness.

  The older man moved quickly. He scooped up Tyler and carried him to the end of the capillary that opened into a small storage room of spare air filters. At the end of the room was a portal that allowed access into an airlock. This particular airlock was used mostly during construction of the Magellan, and rarely in the decades since. Järvinen hoped that it was still operational.

  He set Tyler down and tapped his comm unit.

  “Raven One,” he spoke into the radio microphone on his sleeve. “I’ve apprehended the worker who may have overheard my last communiqué.”

  “Did he compromise us?” came the reply from the comm unit. The voice was being processed through a disguise algorithm.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Järvinen said. “Still, we might be at risk.”

  “I am assuming you are going to clean up after this mess of yours, Järvinen,” the voice said.

  “Of course,” the white-haired man replied into his comm unit. “I just need an override access code for airlock 18-c.”

  “I can open it for you from here,” the voice said, still garbled beyond identification. Järvinen considered the interior airlock door, and it suddenly burst open. He looked down at the unconscious Tyler, who was starting to stir, and drug him into the airlock.

  Järvinen had a horrifying thought. What if Raven One, displeased with his security lapse, would try to airlock them both? He rolled the body all the way into the airlock and then quickly jumped out.

  As soon as he cleared the interior door, the grey, windowless airlock slid shut.

  “What the—” Järvinen half-shouted. “You almost trapped me in there! Are you trying to kill me?”

  A guttural laugh sounded from Järvinen’s comm.

  Through the airlock door, Järvinen heard a familiar suction sound. He knew Tyler would be dead from space exposure in seconds, and hopefully it would be a long while before anyone realized the transient was missing.

  “Don’t be paranoid. I don’t want to kill you, Järvinen. I have plans for you,” the voice said. “Grand plans.”

  Thirteen-year-old Amberly sat cross-legged on her mother’s bed, looking out the bedroom window into an immense star field. Her mother, Kimberly, stood behind her, running a brush through the girl’s straight hair.

  “It’s that one, isn't it?” Amberly asked.

  “Yes. The one twinkling yellow, next to that brighter cluster,” her mother replied. “I’m pretty sure that’s Viapos. And the fourth planet orbiting that yellow dwarf is Arara.”

  “Is the star named for someone, like Magellan?”

  “No. It’s short for the star’s real name,” Kimberly said. “It’s Latin. Vie Positis Finnis.”

  Amberly’s mother set the brush on the bed and rested her hands on her daughter’s shoulder.

  “What does Viapos mean, then?” the girl asked.

  Kimberly appeared to ignore her daughter’s question, and spoke absentmindedly. “No one has spoken Latin for a thousand years.” She walked around the bed and placed a hand on the Plexiglas, as if she could touch Viapos.

  “It means ‘waypoint’s end.’ Humanity’s greatest journey terminates in that star’s planetary system,” Kimberly said, closing her eyes to accentuate a memory. “On Arara, you can feel the warmness of Viapos on your face as that glorious ball of fire pushes away the morning chill.”

  “Let’s go there,” Amberly said with a childlike sense of adventure.

  “My dear girl. I want nothing more than to show you the deep green grasslands of the Lewis Islands where I grew up,” Kimberly sat beside her daughter. “It’s a long, lonely three-year journey from Magellan to Arara. By the time we’d get there, you’d be halfway through your adolescence. We’d have to find passage on a deep-space ship heading in the right direction.”

  “Dad says the American Spirit will be here, maybe in a year, and it’s going to Arara,” Amberly perked up, remembering the spaceship trivia her father, a pilot, liked to discuss with annoying frequency. “Could we go on that ship?”

  “Maybe,” Kimberly said, with a bit of sadness lacing her voice. “But we can’t go until my research is done here. Once I have finished that, I will take you to Arara. I promise. But we must wait. The science I am researching now is important, and I can’t stop working on it now.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what experiments you are doing?” asked Amberly, who loved all things science.

  “Amberly, you are the smartest 13-year-old I have ever known,” Kimberly smiled. “Well, maybe not as smart as me when I was 13 —”

  “Mom!”

  “I said maybe. But the work I am doing is too complex for even y
ou to understand. Someday I’ll show you everything I’ve discovered.”

  “Someday soon, I hope,” Amberly said in a bright voice. “Mom, I want to be a waypoint-famous scientist. I want to be like you. Just like you.”

  Kimberly smiled, pleased. “If you study hard and avoid distractions like boys—”

  “Mom!”

  “Amberly, they are not worth your attention.”

  “Okay, mom. I got it. Study hard, no boys. Waypoint’s smartest scientist, here I come.”

  “The galaxy’s smartest scientist.” Kimberly reached behind her bed and picked up a blue duffle bag.

  Amberly frowned. “Do you have to go right now? Let’s identify some constellations together. Or maybe a game of chess?”

  “I’m sorry sweetheart,” Kimberly said. “Dad is already waiting for me in the hangar.”

  “How long will you be gone this time?” Amberly said softly, looking down and pulling absentmindedly on her hair.

  “A week, maybe two. It depends on how long it will take to complete the Spencer Minorem data collection,” Kimberly said, referring to the weak star nearby. She slipped a finger under Amberly’s chin and lifted her head until their gazes met.

  “Listen to me. The time has come for you to learn how to be strong and independent. I won’t always be here for you, and you need to know how to be your own person. You’re still young, but you’re old enough to decide your own future.”

  “So why do I have to listen to Kora when you and dad are gone?” Amberly asked.

  “Good point. You’re probably smarter than your sister, but she has almost three more years of life experience than you, and right now that experience means she’s in charge. Don’t worry. Soon you’ll catch up and pass Kora.”

  Kimberly stepped out the door into the living area and opened the apartment door that opened into an average Magellan corridor.