After Caesar 2.1

The command team of Neo22 were all present in the command center, their attention glued to the screens. They were watching for N22, and for several minutes, no one said a word. Eventually, Gina spotted a bit of reflection on a screen. “Look,” she exclaimed!

She was the only one who had seen it, but she touched the screen and zoomed in where it had shown.

It was very disappointing. What they saw was a piece of a bay, spinning in the darkness. Occasionally, it would catch the light from the distant sun, but it was mostly featureless. Rhoda carefully used the thrusters to bring them into relative position with the piece.

“Can we get over there in suits,” Fred asked?

“We should be able to,” Paula replied. As they watched, however, they noticed something strange. The reflections were getting less defined. Again, the screen was zoomed in, and light shone on the area of interest.

“Is this all that’s left,” Paula wondered? As the bay spun, they could see that it was slowly turning into dust.

“What could cause that?” Rhoda wondered.

“Emergency power, get us away from here!”

They felt the force as the ship backed away from the ruined station. Paula thought furiously. If she was correct, she needed to have something to destroy any nanites as they hit her ship. “Gina, can you make a spark each time a particle hits us?”

Her daughter-in-law looked at her as if she was insane. “I don’t follow you.”

“I want a big enough spark to vaporize any nanites if they touch us.” Gina glanced at the screen again and realized what Paula was saying.

“Oh shit!” Gina hurried to comply. When the charge was established, there was a flash of light as the dust was burned off. Fred also realized what had happened. “Do you think we were in time?”

“I hope so. I just wish we had been in time for them.”

Later that night, Paula wasn’t able to sleep, so she quietly got up. She didn’t want to wake up Fred, but she wanted time to reflect. She quietly grabbed some clothes and got dressed in the bathroom. Then she went to her favorite spot on the ship. The observation port. It was by common consensus that the people of the ship had decided that this particular port was for her and Fred. They had made a rock that very closely matched the one that they had sat on overlooking Honolulu.

She opened the door to the port, and walked in. She was surprised to see Fred sitting on the rock. “What are you doing here?”

“I woke up when you got up, and I knew where you’d be going, so I came up here.”

She sat down beside him. “Do you think the entire station is destroyed?”

He had been enjoying the memories he had of sitting by this port with Paula, but now, his mind was brought back to what they had seen earlier in the day. "I really don't know. I suppose it could very well be, but we have nothing to support that."

"We were so close, Fred! This is so wrong!"

Fredrik nodded. He often thought of what this very person he was so in love with had once told him. Willem deserved his fate. He deserved so much more than what he had received.

He put an arm around her. "Like I said, Paula, we have nothing to support them all being gone."

"We also have nothing to support them being still alive either."

"Look. We know that our course predictions were correct. Let's speed up a bit and see if we catch up with anything else."

She nodded and put her head into Fred's shoulder. She wanted to start now, but there were several people making sure that nothing was dropped into their ship that could hurt them… and if it had, then they needed a fix for it.

For his part, Fred leaned back against the wall behind him, and held her tight.

They stayed there for several hours.

Gina and Rhoda were at work when Paula entered the command center in the morning. Everything had checked out okay regarding contamination by nanites. Finally, something had gone right in that regard. The question was, were they in time.

Fred's idea of speeding up seemed to be the best one but a bit unsure now. The course followed by N22 would be affected by gravity from various objects operating on an item of a certain mass. Now, that mass was unknown. Predicting anything had new variables. All they could do was make estimates.

They had started computing logical search patterns for debris when they got a surprise.

"This is N22 calling the nearby vessel. Do you read?" The voice was female and sounded desperate.

Gina jumped to the computer and answered. "N22, this is Neo22. We read you loud and clear!"

"Oh, thank God! We have been trying to get this radio working for days. Can you rescue us please?"

Such a simple question, but one which required so much discussion. Fred stood at the back of the room and watched as his wife and daughters went to work. After a couple of hours, they were ready to revise their search pattern. After their engines had fired, the command staff met in the briefing room again.

N22 had discovered their predicament about twelve days ago. They hadn't got much past Earth, when much of their ship started disintegrating. It wasn't a huge leap to realize nanites were involved.

They knew that nanites were the main ingredient of the old missiles, and the orange atmosphere confirmed it. What they discovered, with the help of a doomed doctor on one of their bays, was that the nanites were able to change their food source. While they attacked organic matter, when they ran out, they were able to switch to inorganic of almost any type. When organic material became available again, they swarmed onto it. Kent Peterson, a doctor doomed on a disconnected bay observed this dispassionately as his wife was killed, then attacked himself.

Every bay of the N22 had been ejected by the computers before they could even react. Marc Dodson realized what needed to be done quickly, but too late to save any of the bays. The command ring had drifted too far away from the bays by this time. They had charged the outer hull, vaporizing the nanites as they touched it. All that was left was about nine hundred people from the several thousand that had been on N22.

The people in the briefing room were shocked. They had been prepared to take on several thousand. Now, the amount had dropped to less than one thousand. It was a shock that there would be so few to be rescued, but they would happily do what they could.

On the remains of N22, Rashda, Colleen, Marc, Carla, John, and I were in the command center.

John and I had hurried to help people in the command ring as soon as I was considered able to move around by Carla. We still had the upstairs and downstairs rings, but they were not usable. There were several breaches in the hulls where the large bays had made contact.

Carla and Marc worked to plug power into the hull before the nanites made it inside.

Rashda and Colleen were manning the controls, trying to dodge the bays, and clouds of debris.

Soon, we were away from the scattered wreckage, and free of all the nanites not intended to be inside us.

About eight days after the destruction, we heard a voice on our comm system! It was apparently a ship from Earth. Rather than question who they were or how they knew who we were, we tried to answer them. Something was wrong with our transmission system. We could listen, but not talk.

Marc and John worked to get our communications working again, but each time they tried to transmit again, the air got more and more thick with smoke. Finally, it worked! I'm not sure what they did, but it was so wonderful when we heard an answer. I ended up crying into John's shoulder.

Carla had a hard time keeping from crying too as she talked with the woman, Gina, from the other ship.

It was a real shock to hear that the other ship, Neo22, was there specifically to rescue us, and that they'd been there for so long, waiting.

We were waiting as well, as what was left of our ship was pulled against a docking port. We were able to travel through two by two, just as the animals long ago on Noah's Ark.

Slowly, we moved our nine hundred people aboard this new ark, hoping to find an Ararat and rainbow somewhere in the galaxy.

I was a bit embarrassed when John and I came through the airlock. As soon as Doctor Sylvia heard who I was, I found myself being placed on a gurney and taken to a hospital.

There, I was subjected to a whole bunch of tests to make sure I and my baby were alright after the last few days.

I sat back in the bed and sighed. It had been several days since I had felt human. I smelled like acrid electronic smoke. I think I had several patches of vomit (not all mine) on my clothes. I had been promised access to a bath just as soon as I was done here.

I really wanted that before I had to make the acquaintance of anyone. Unfortunately, that was not to be. John opened the door, and I was happy to see him, but then he held it open for Rashda and another man I thought was familiar.

"Rose," said Rashda, "I would like you to meet Fredrik Freeman, a friend of mine, and the former president of Earth."

I could almost have died. I looked like something even too gross for the cat to drag in, and I'm meeting the former president. No wonder he looked familiar! I'd seen this man in our command center.

I decided I had no choice, so I held out my hand. I felt mortified as he took my hand, and rather than shake it, he kissed it. I wondered if he knew where that hand had been. I had run out of gloves as I was helping some of the people.

There were many injuries we had to deal with, and Carla and I ended up as nurses. Most things were from trying to get people safely into the command ring very quickly, but a few people were injured by the bay doors closing on them. That was a nightmare. If it wasn't, it would be, I'm sure.

Now, here was the president kissing my hand.

"I'm very happy to meet you, Rose. I've heard so much about you."

"It's nice to finally meet you face to face, Sir. It was nice to know we had a friend on Earth to talk to."

Rashda looked a bit uncomfortable when I said that.

"What's wrong," I asked?

"I only spoke to your station a couple of times"

"But the long conversation with Perl? You gave us so much help," I supplied. He shook his head.

"Apparently it was another of Willem's tricks," my husband told me.

"We had left Earth before the first of Perls messages even got there. As a matter of fact, we began receiving the whole conversation being sent back from the station, I'm guessing as a mockery from Willem."

I couldn't understand. "Why did he do that? He gave us hope that Earth was there, helping us."

John shook his head. "He gave us information through his AI that he controlled. He could make us believe what he wanted. And it was more play. I can imagine how he would have enjoyed watching this conversation himself. He would have been thrilled."