The Icarus Project
Chapter Two of Something that will never be Published
The Deep Space Scout Starstalker came out of hyperspace on the edge of the solar system with a lurch and the sound of protesting metal. The ship continued to produce tortured noises after fully emerging from jump space, and a series of lights on the status panel had gone an ominous blue, instead of their normal healthy green.
"Damage report", intoned Force Commander Indunna. The damage report request had almost taken on ritual in the last few weeks post jump. The ship was in a pretty bad way.
"Hull breach in cargo bay 2, failure in two air pumps and an electronic failure in the kitchens", responded Section Controller Hurrun. "Maintenance team are moving to seal the hull breech now, Sir. Actually, it's not too bad this time, no more than minor damage."
Commander Indunna sighed inwardly. Things weren't going well when a hull breech was regarded as 'minor' damage.
"Very well", he said rising from the command chair, "I'll be in my office until repairs are complete, notify me and we'll commence system scans."
With that Indunna made his way off the bridge. As he walked to his cabin he reflected upon the state of the Starstalker. In a way the state of the ship reflected the state of the Hegemony, things were falling apart at an alarming rate. The problem was there weren"t just weren"t the trained technicians to keep things running. Indunna reached his cabin door, and touched the opening control. Nothing happened. With a sigh he opened the manual override and stolidly cranked the door open.
Indunna sat heavily on his bunk, the Tariss didn't much care for bunks, but the plans had called for bunks, so bunks had duly been installed. Indunna would have much preferred a reed bed, but he looked upon the bunk as a necessary sacrifice for starfaring. His thoughts returned to their earlier line of contemplation. The Hegemony was in big trouble. When the visitors had first arrived the Tariss had only just discovered the secret of basic flight. Suddenly the visitors had given them fusion reactions kept in magnetic bottles, electricity, contragravity, and the hyperdrive - not to mention a few thousand other things that he didn't really understand either.
The visitors, the visitors had seemed such a great deal, they had forced the Tariss to unify, they had given them this common language, they had given them plans , and advice, and a million other things. And then they had simply vanished. Their people had gotten back onto their starships one day, and had left. At first no one had realised what was happening, the visitors had simply said that they had to return to their own worlds for awhile. That was fifteen years ago.
Things hadn't gone well since then. The Tariss had suddenly found themselves the proud owners of a pretty advanced infrastructure, with electricity in every home, mass transit systems all over the planet, and a million other technological marvels that they now simply couldn't do without. The only problem was that the Tariss only had a fairly vague idea of how much of it worked. As things broke down no one was really sure how to fix them.
And now they were searching for the visitors with the fleet that they had been taught how to build, but had no real idea how to maintain. Thoughts of colonising other worlds had been shelved, as the homeworld suffered increasingly, though a few outposts had been established in the process of the search. But the ships were in increasingly poor repair, and the Tariss would soon have to face the very real possibility that their civilisation might soon collapse.
Indunna's thoughts were interrupted by the intercom. "What is it?", he asked tiredly once he had turned on the device.
It was Section Controller Hurrun, in an obviously excited state.
"Commander, we've begun picking up radio and television signals from one of the planets in this system. They're in a variety of languages, but Sir, there can be no doubt, a pretty substantial amount of them are in English. I think that we've found a world belonging to the Terrans!"
Indunna sprang to his feet, "I'm on my way", he said. The Terrans, he thought, after 15 years we've finally found the Terrans. At last we can finally find out why the Terran Federation decided to abandon us. Perhaps we can save our world.
Indunna hurried to the Bridge.