“I am acting like it! I have been working every day for the past 60 years!” He yelled. His voice echoing throughout the cavern.
“Don’t you dare tell that bullshit to me Tomas, I know you!” She yelled back. Tomas took a step back, he had never seen her yell at anyone.
“I don’t know what you mean. I have been leading, authorizing projects and like.” Tomas said softly.
“Tomas, can you really not see? Ever since Cloud station blew up, you have been reacting, your last command was to get us here, but since then you have been afraid to make decisions, you left everything to your people. Where is the boy whose dream of grasping the stars pushed him to conquer the world, to create his own country?” She said just as softly.
Tomas reached up to his neck and grasped the chain around his neck, it felt as if it was biting into his skin.
“It was my fault, they were my responsibility.” He said.
“It was the fault of people who ordered the attack.” She said.
“I could have shared our technology with them, they wouldn’t have had a reason to attack us then.”
“They were greedy, and unworthy of the things we possessed. The moment they had our technology, they would have turned it against their neighbors, you know that.”
“I could have kept our warships close, instead of hiding them away.” Tomas said shakily.
“You know that it wouldn’t have mattered, they would have found some other way.”
“But those people, my people wouldn’t be dead!”
“Perhaps, or perhaps someone else would have died in their place. You can’t keep focusing on what was.”
“What if I make another mistake?” He said.
Seo-yun smiled sadly. “You will, but you can’t let those mistakes pull you down. We followed you here, to this other world where we struggle daily to find our way. We left our home planet, our roots, everything we knew because you asked us to. We put our trust in you. We don’t need someone who sits behind the desk, too afraid to lead.” She grabbed him by the shoulders, he could see the determination in her eyes. “We need our leader back, the man who created everything from nothing, the man that could have ruled the world, but didn’t because he had bigger goals, the man that laughed in the face of the world leaders when they threatened him and wanted him to step down.” Her gaze pierced into his eyes. “We need a King.”
Tomas looked down at her, he heard the conviction in her words, could see the intensity in her eyes, and there was something else there, something he had hoped to see for a long time.
“Alright, I will be what you want me to be.” Tomas said, a touch of her determination now creeping into his voice. Seo-yun smiled, she put her hands on his head and pulled him down. She kissed him lightly on the lips for barely a moment, and then she pulled back.
“I know you will.” She said, and then turned and left the cavern.
Tomas gazed after her until she turned a corner, then he turned his eyes to the crystal forest. He stood there for a time. He fished out the pendant, he pressed the button and the names of the three hundred and sixteen appeared, he gazed at them for a moment, and then turned it off, he pulled the chain off his neck and walked to one of the trees. He hanged the chain on one of the crystal tree branches, he would never forget those 316 names, but he no longer needed a reminder around his neck. He turned and started back. He had entered the cavern as a man weighed down by the mistakes of the past, he left as an Leader looking towards the future.
Chapter Eight
OES Traveler – Unknown system
The light from the star expanded outward. It traveled through the emptiness of space with nothing impending its path. It’s eventual destination was a planet five hundred light years away from its starting point. Until there was a flash. The fate of the photons was altered as they struck a silver metallic surface. They were scattered in billions of directions, never to reach that far away planet.
“Hyperspace transfer complete, Ship Master.” Ship Handler Jorge Nunez said.
“Good.” Ship Master Kisaragi Hana, of the Olympus Explorer Ship Traveler said.
She looked expectantly at the holographic table in front of her. The holo above was constantly updated, as the computers analyzed the light they were receiving. The center of the hologram was the Traveler, with the other objects in system just now becoming visible. The system was one of those that they had very little information on, as the Union ship just passed through it on its way to Earth, this system was one that the Union ship visited directly from the nebula. And any data on it was corrupted and lost. This system was between Sanctuary and Sol. Although it was still a lot closer to Sanctuary, being only 12 light years away. There was not much to do until the computer processed the full picture of the system and that would take a while. They were several light hours away from the star. A few minutes later the Sensor Handler George Smith exclaimed out loud. “What a hell?”
Ship Master Kisaragi was about to ask him what he meant when she noticed the latest update to the holo.
“Is this correct?” She asked.
“I believe it is Ship Master.” Sensor Handler said.
“Let’s go to yellow alert.” Ship Master Kisaragi said to her first officer, High Prime Rolland Ricks.
He immediately reached for his chair’s display and a moment later, yellow lights flashed five times on the floors of the ship, followed by five alert sounds. Meaning that the ship was now on yellow alert.
“Navigation prim the hyperdrive.” Ship Master Kisaragi said.
“I am getting a lot of comms, nothing targeted at us for now, only radio leakage.” Comm Handler said.
Ship Master Kisaragi nodded. That was a good thing, it suggested that they couldn’t see them yet, and will only see them after the light from the Travelers arrival reaches them.
This was why they were here. The hologram now showed the Traveler, and the fourth planet in the system. The planet was orbiting the system’s sun on an orbit that brought it above the sun’s plane. It was the method that the fleet decided to use, for ships to orient themselves inside the system. The suns plane was the plane that the sun was on, which was parallel to the galactic disk, the galactic plane. If the system was above the disk or below didn’t matter. No planet had an orbit that was exactly parallel to the galactic plane. All maneuvering inside a system used that system’s star as an orientation point. The Traveler was now around 5 light hours from the sun, about the average distance one could engage the hyperdrive. No system was the same. The fourth planet of the system was only a few light minutes from the sun, the light Traveler was getting, was just shy of 5 hours old. That meant that they could see the events as they happened five hours ago.
The hologram showed a settled planet, with a station in its orbit. And ships moving back and forth, a few were on a course that would bring them to the outer reaches of the system on the other side of the Travelers position.
“Niri, are those radio communications enough for you to start the translation of their language?” Kisaragi asked Niri the ship’s Ai.
“I can start, but a more direct communication would be preferable.” Niri said over the ship’s speakers.
“Start, we will see what they do when they notice us.” Kisaragi said.
“Very well, Ship Master.”
Few of the new ships that Olympus built were installed with an Ai. There wasn’t a lot of them to begin with, as they didn’t build more. Tomas Klein was hesitating. So they had only those that were built before they came to Sanctuary. Niri was one of the third generation of Ai’s the humans built. And as she passed all the test she was given a choice of what she wanted to do. No Ai of a lower generation than fourth identified themselves by gender, that was something that happened after. But they succumbed to a human tradition and let the humans assign one to them. It was easier for human beings to care for something that had a gender and a name. The decision to install Ai’s came from the battle between EWS Athena and Concordis ships, when the fifth generation Ai Iris calculated the targeting solution for Athena.