The laughter faded and was replaced by gasps of awe as thin bright streaks trailed across the horizon behind the three specks of light. The streams grew as halos formed around the glowing engine blasts. As the fiery spheres dipped below the horizon, the networks cut to following each of the three ships separately; around the world people could choose which feed to follow. The networks also broadcast speeches from various heads of state, followed by the Pope and other religious leaders, a number of celebrities, luminaries in astronomical studies, and Nobel laureates.
The media coverage and the quality of their images was a far cry from the fuzzy, monochrome video of the first moon landing that had been broadcast seventy years earlier. The live shots of the UNSDF battleships launching were shown from every imaginable vantage point. The images underscored the advancements that had been made in space technology and also in broadcast technology. The primary video was circumscribed by a number of constantly changing thumbnail images. The secondary images included still and video shots from dozens of sites on Earth and from various altitudes in orbit, as well as live feeds from the surfaces and orbits of the moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Unless the viewer intervened by making a specific selection, the primary image feed was chosen by the content provider to best fit the audio. A Worldunity viewer could select from eight hundred different commentators speaking in any of a hundred languages or watch the channel that ranked the talking heads by their real-time popularity.
From her cocoon, Aki watched the sensor readouts during the fully automated launch sequence. Intermittently, she glanced at another monitor that showed the broadcasts from Earth. She switched her secondary monitor from a speech by the young Dalai Lama to a concert at Carnegie Hall. The conductor was leading the orchestra in a rendition of the Star Wars theme. Aki chuckled at the jingoistic irony.
Raul was watching the same channel and chimed in. “The doubters are rocking their victory song.”
“Check out the Vienna feed. They’re playing Beethoven’s Eroica. Maybe that’s more your speed?” suggested Aida Northgate, the ship’s systems engineer. She was always upbeat; Aida reminded Raul of a pixie, he had told Aki. Aki was pleased that the two of them got along well. Through Aki’s recent tumults, she had forgotten how powerful her intuition could be.
“Don’t be too sure. A lot of the aliens were friendly in Star Wars. You can’t say the same about Napoleon,” Raul said.
Aki changed to another channel. In London, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was playing a triumphant march by Elgar. In Moscow, the Kirov Orchestra was playing the ballad Stenka Razin. According to the commentary, Stenka Razin was the story of a hero who led an uprising against the forces of bureaucracy. The music helped settle Aki’s nerves. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and tried to clear her head.
“Joseph, which feed are you listening to?” Aki asked the other member of her Contact Team.
“Berlin, ma’am,” the young Special Forces soldier replied. Joseph Turnbull was twenty-six years old, laconic yet well educated. Given his military background, handsome looks, and brave demeanor, Aki felt he was the best possible substitute for Mark Ridley. Captain Turnbull was assigned to protect Aki and Raul. During their speed and endurance training, Aki had been amazed by Turnbull’s agility. Having someone who reminded her of Mark made her feel protected even though it pained her to relive the memories of her last voyage in the Phalanx.
Thinking of how the upgrades made it seem like a different ship even though she had spent so much time on board on the previous mission, Commander Shiraishi switched to the broadcast from Berlin, which was playing orchestral music by Wagner.
“That is Tannhäuser, right?” she asked, trying to establish some rapport with the soldier.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
The opera told of the struggle between sacred and profane love. Aki stayed on the broadcast coming from Berlin, audio-only. Despite being transmitted millions of kilometers, the sound quality of the Deep Space Network was free from static and ghost noises. Aki was intrigued by the fact that it was being performed live but several minutes in the past. She switched her monitor to one of the external cameras.
As she listened to the scene in which Elizabeth prays and then asks the returning pilgrims for news of Tannhäuser, Aki gazed at the pale blue half-illuminated dot and the smaller white dot next to it. She found the calmer state of mind she sought. All the battles she had fought were behind her. Humanity sometimes seemed both inhuman and inhumane, but she had found a path that brought her a chance to fulfill her dream. She felt that nothing would stop her from making direct contact with the Builders.
The waiting was finally over at the UNSDF Fleet Headquarters as well. The only questions left for them were when the war would start and how much they would be able to prepare before attacks started. Since the fleet had to depart five months before the Builders’ arrival, almost all tactical strategic contingencies had to be decided in advance. Once the ships were launched, nothing more than minor corrections could be implemented.
The difficulty came from the ships taking off while the Builders were still outside of Pluto’s orbit, nine billion kilometers away. Raul had once likened it to a soccer goalie trying to defend a net eight meters wide but having to pick a pose and stay frozen even though the opposing midfielders were still dribbling up from the opposite end of the field.
“Had the Builders shown something besides complete indifference, even acknowledged our presence, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” one of the UNSDF headquarter members had told Aki.
Despite the actions taken by people on Earth, the Builders never deviated from their original trajectory for even a second. The Builders gave no warnings to humanity. They had not shown any indications that they would attempt to thwart the attack. The possibility remained that life on Earth was insignificant to their plans. The Builders could not be bothered to acknowledge human existence. If the Builders wanted to eradicate humanity, they could have done so long before now. Sometimes, Aki wondered why they had not done so.
The deceleration of the Builders’ ship was constant at a force of 1/100 of a G. Normally, the deceleration of a slowing vessel increased as it burned off fuel and became lighter. Instead, the Builders modified their thrust to keep their deceleration constant. Six years earlier, when the first sightings were made, eight engines had been burning. Now the Builders were down to only one. The Builders, in their relentless commitment to achieving their goal regardless of the costs, had used matter from the engines they no longer needed as fuel for the only engine still intact. This was another achievement brought about by their mastery of nanotechnology. To be able to maintain constant deceleration while consuming their own vessel for its stored energy, they had to push their ship’s structural integrity to its limits. If the Builders continued to brake at the same rate of deceleration, the last of their speed would burn off inside the earth’s orbit and the remainder of their ship would enter into an orbit around the sun that ran alongside the inner planets. Before becoming an artificial planet, Aki presumed that the Builders would need to stop to replenish the resources they had converted into propulsion fuel during the years of their arduous voyage. The five potential candidates were, in order of likelihood, the Vert-Ring, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and the moon.
No one knew why the Builders were not stopping sooner. Destinations like the Kuiper Belt or one of the outer planets had seemed logical to Aki. The most plausible theory was that their nanotechnology was partially powered by solar radiation—Ring architecture forcing individual photons to interact with single atoms in order to produce energy. The Builders had located their Ring production plant as close to the sun as possible. Once the Ring had finally been constructed, a secondary fuel source appeared to include the antimatter generated by the Ring.