We Are Stardust (pt. 1)
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Commander Nyoka gasped for breath when her capsule opened. Around her, hissing airlocks signaled the awakening of the other crew members. Nyoka grabbed the sides of her pod and hoisted herself out. The subsystems designed to maintain muscle mass couldn’t hold a candle to good, old-fashioned exercise, but they were a hell of a lot better than waking up from 50 years of atrophy.
“DAISy, give me a report.” Nyoka said. A large screen blinked on to display the status of the vessel and the awakening crew. A pleasant voice replied.
“The crew is healthy. Everything is working properly, Commander. How was your rest?”
“Damn it, DAISy, you know I hate being under. Calling it ‘rest’ won’t change that. Rivera, you awake yet?”
“Yes, ma’am. Up and feeling fine.” Rivera sat on the floor stretching her legs and back. “I don’t understand why you hate being under so much.”
“It’s unnatural. There’s no telling what could have happened while you were out. Isn’t that right, Commander?” a man climbing from a pod said. His legs wobbled beneath him, but he began to dress in his uniform.
“You’ve been awake less than a minute, and already you’re kissing Nyoka’s ass?” A fourth crewmember clambered out of a capsule labeled Lt. Massoud. She, too, began a repertoire of stretches.
“Massoud, I need you to go through DAISy’s scans of the planet; mark anything that looks promising. Hughes, make sure the drones brought back enough samples. Run whatever we have through the full gamut. Rivera, stick with me, we’re headed to the bridge. I’m ready to see this rock with my own eyes.”
Nyoka strode through the glistening corridors. Walking calmed her nerves. The doors to the bridge slid apart with a soft whir, revealing a world of chrome which she entered without hesitation. After sitting in her chair, she pulled in a lungful of air and held it. She released it when her chest tingled. “DAISy, open the blast shields and activate the radiation filters.”
“It would be my pleasure, Commander.”
Two metallic clunks sounded off before the steady buzz of unseen mechanisms filled the bridge. As the gap between each half-shield grew, a brilliant light shone through the solar screen. The light took on a greenish hue from the radiation filters. Commander Nyoka looked out at the dwarf star, her eyes squinting. A round silhouette moved across the field of light.
“Oh my god,” Rivera whispered.
“Welcome to Petram II, Private Rivera.”
Commander Nyoka double-checked all the readouts from the planetary scans. While she did pay special attention to the bits Lieutenant Massoud brought to the forefront, she could never bring herself to completely trust someone else’s analysis. Whenever she tried, something nagged her mind until she inevitably went through all the data for herself anyway.
“You’re sure these oxygen levels are correct?” Nyoka asked.
Massoud rolled her eyes. “Yes. Why do I even go through the scans if you’re just going to second guess me at every point?”
“They seem a little high to me,” Nyoka replied, ignoring Massoud’s question.
“It’s definitely higher concentrations than Earth, but it’s within the parameters. Why are you even looking at the atmospheric readings? They’re all in the right ranges. Did you see the level of speciation in plant life? It’s incredible.”
Nyoka flicked her wrist a few times and the display screens slid away from her, replaced by subsequent pages. She bit the inside of her cheek as she read Massoud’s note. “You think it’s because of the atmosphere?”
“My best guess is the high concentrations of carbon dioxide make it easier for plants to thrive, but… the levels of sunlight are so much lower. It’s confusing for sure.”
“And what do you make of the samples we have?”
Massoud glanced at Hughes. Neither knew who she expected to answer until she looked up at Hughes.
“Uh, that’s the other thing that’s very strange. The plants aren’t wild like they should be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like… The fruit is too… fruity.” Nyoka’s face must have conveyed her confusion, because Hughes began to explain himself. “I mean, it’s too fleshy. The seeds are mostly small, and the sugar content is way higher than we would have expected. It’s like they’re…”
“Delicious?” Rivera offered.
“Domesticated,” Hughes finished.
That night, Nyoka couldn’t sleep. Technically, it isn’t night, she reminded herself, as she lay awake in the dark cabin. The small planet rotated much faster than Earth, and was orbiting a much smaller star. She chuckled to herself as she thought of Rivera’s nickname for it: Earth Junior.
In nearly every measurable way, Petram II seemed ideal for human settlement, but Nyoka wondered what, if any, long term effects there might be from the shorter day-night cycles and solar years. Would her descendants still strive to maintain 24-hour schedules when there was no astronomical reason to? Would they adopt an entirely new calendar or shoehorn Earth’s onto this new little world?
However, these were only the questions Nyoka used to avoid the one actually keeping her awake.
Domesticated. Despite her efforts, the word kept creeping into her thoughts, a persistent leak in an otherwise impenetrable dam. Domesticated? She imagined the word as a tiny acrobat spinning about a bar, somehow gaining inexplicable speed. She felt that if she could stop the acrobat’s spinning—slow it down, subject it to the forces of friction that it would experience if it existed outside her mind—she could begin to theorize and hypothesize. But she couldn’t. And it kept spinning.
Eventually, she rose from her bed and instructed DAISy to begin her morning routine. Artificial light replaced the artificial dark. It was refracted and re-focused through various lenses to trick the brain into seeing warm sunbeams and a Rayleigh-scattered sky.
Nyoka lost count as she ground out her push-ups, pull-ups, and squats. The acrobat accelerated still. Domesticated.
Official protocol dictated that Rivera and Massoud would be the first to visit the surface, and Nyoka hated it.
The shuttle dwindled to a tiny pinprick of glinting starlight before bursting into a reddish stream of fire.
*Rivera to ESS Exodus, do you copy?*
“We copy, Rivera. How’re things?”
*Atmospheric entry is going smoothly. We’re leveling out. Nothing unexpected. It’s just a massive, indigo, wonderland.*
“Copy that, Rivera. Keep us posted.”
Nyoka would have given anything to be on that first shuttle. Anything except my command post.
Hughes offered a sympathetic smile. “Cheer up, Commander. We’ll have our turn.”
Nyoka rushed back to the communications console.
“Say again for ESS Exodus. Repeat, say again for ESS Exodus.” Hughes' voice was more frantic than Nyoka had ever heard it before.
No response.
“Exodus to ground team, do you copy?”
No response.
“Come in ground team.”
The silence tore holes in them both. It stretched from fear to agony.
“Ground team, come in,” Hughes repeated the command limply.
*Sorry! Sorry, Exodus! We read you loud and clear. We are OK. Repeat, We are Oscar Kilo.* Rivera stopped talking, but the transmission didn’t cut out. Nyoka could hear… something—voices?—in the background. High pitched, babbling sounds. Then Massoud laughing.
*Apologies Exodus. This is Massoud of ground team. Rivera is preoccupied. You’re not going to believe this. There’s people here.*
