The Second Coming of Humanity Ch. 01

Chapter 1

Crash

Jax Ciello wasn't sure how you could feel both too cold and too hot at the same time, but that is exactly how waking up from suspension felt to him every time. The only thing pleasant about it was the nearly 2g acceleration holding him down to the bed. Acceleration, or deceleration in this case, meant that they were out of the cruise phase and were slowing down in preparation for their mid-voyage course correction. Having spent most of his early childhood on Tau Ceti 5, a world with gravity just over twice that of Earth's, the heaviness was a pleasant change from the weightlessness prior to entering suspension.

Jax slowly sat up and put his bare feet on the cool metal floor. He took a few deep breaths of the noisily circulating dry air, and then reached for his receiver in the compartment beside the bed and clipped it onto his right ear. His visual field filled with various status messages for him and about the ship, while beeps and tones and auditory messages from the living and artificial crewmembers filled his ears.

"System: filter. Wakeup only," Jax spoke hoarsely and maybe a little too loudly in the small room that was his home aboard the ship. He really should remember to change his defaults.

The data and messages in front of his eyes quickly diminished to only his vital health information. Suddenly, he became acutely aware of his urgent need to urinate and vacate his bowels, so he stood up and pressed the restroom panel on the wall, which then spun away and revealed his room's facilities. After having taken care of that, he next opened his kitchen cabinet and filled his largest glass with water and gulped it down.

"Workstation, please." The bed folded up into the wall to be replaced by a small desk and a comfortable reclining chair. Jax sat down and called up the artificial crewmember, Bette, for the bio department where he was the second officer.

"Hello, Jax. Welcome back," the nearly too human voice said to him, accompanied by a smiling animated avatar. "On account of the ship's emergency status, the bio department is in low-power standby mode. However, I can give you a report from just before we began our deceleration."

"Wait, what?" The words just kind of stumbling out of his mouth. "What emergency status? Why?"

"Carbonaceous planetary debris detected. 1g deceleration phase aborted. 2g-3g avoidance burns in progress. All crewmembers awakened. Minor impact damage affecting mid and aft sections..."

Jax pulled up the shipwide messages and noticed what his groggy post-suspension mind did not at first: dozens of red and yellow announcements, instructions, and warnings detailed what had been happening. It was day 258 according to ship time, 431 standard days due to the time dilation of traveling at 80% of the speed of light. He wasn't supposed to have been awakened until day 286, after the planned 30 days of 1g deceleration at their course correction point, the orange dwarf star Kappa-255, before they continued on to Epsilon Eridani.

Bette's voice continued, "...hypotheses include planetesimal tidal destruction (probability zero-point-five-four), planetesimal impacts (probability zero-point-two-one), rogue asteroids (probability zero-point-zero-nine), secondary effects of cometary bombardment (probability..."

Jax checked for any personal instructions or messages. A botanist was unlikely to be of much use in an emergency like this, but he should still attend to priorities assigned to him.

He had no messages from any of the human crewmembers, though there were only 18 of them. The medical artificial crewmember, Ace, had assigned him typical post-suspension health checks and exercise, while the deputy command artificial crewmember, Mike, had given him orders to backup data onto portable storage, preserve algae cultures for transport, and withdraw a portion of the seed cargo and place this in all lifecraft.

Bette's voice was still going, "...likelihood of evacuation order in next 2 days, zero-point-zero-seven; likelihood of evacuation order in next 7 days, zero-point-one-eight; likelihood of evacuation order in next 14 days..."

"System, hold." Jax quickly stood up, as Bette's voice and other data was cleared from his vision. The other side effect of waking up from suspension was a sudden, painfully stiff erection. That had to be dealt with regardless of emergency orders or not. Even though this was a twice-a-day occurrence for much of his adult life, not to mention that of all humans on the ship and everywhere else, the post-suspension version was a quite more urgent and undeniable feeling.

He indicated with a glance in his visual field that he wanted his claxim deployed. The device unfolded from the wall behind him, and he quickly approached. Removing his loose fitting suspension clothing and arranging himself on the seat, he carefully directed his member into the appropriate slot where it was enveloped by a warm gel substance. Placing both feet and hands on the designated conductive panels, he said, "begin."

The sounds, feelings, smells, and sights of the ship quickly faded away, replaced by the austere, yet comforting virtual environment of the claxim. Sensations trickled across all of his senses. Colors. Patterns of light and darkness. Heat and coolness. Rhythms of gentle touches and more intense pressure on his skin. Sounds like musical sighs filled his ears. Smells of trees, flowers, incense, and smoke tugged at his memories. Ripples of squeezing and wet sliding movements up and down his erect member quickly overwhelmed him.

Jax moaned. At least, he felt like he moaned. He knew he was breathing and felt the vibrations in his throat, but no sound reached his ears. The virtual environment generated by his receiver prevented that.

His heart rate and respiration steadily increased. He would try to focus on a single part of this multi-sensory flood, but never could. Every smell or color or sensation on his skin passed too quickly to precisely identify what it was. The effect was pleasurable, but he was never quite sure why. The pressure in his groin increased with ever growing intensity of movement on his erection. A tingling sensation began to build radiating outwards towards his extremities until he reached his orgasm in a silent cry, while he pulsed into the claxim that gently sucked every drop that he could offer.

As he was gently returned to reality on the ship and disconnected himself from the claxim, he noticed his test results appear in the lower right of his vision.

[[2.1 minutes. 0.38 mL. 12% viable. 1.4% increase. Sample transferred to storage.]]

At least now, at 26 standard years of age, no, 27 now, his samples were rarely ever rejected.

Jax had read that many generations ago, at least up until the last couple centuries, people didn't need claxim-mediated fertility management. Apparently, even further back than that, humans didn't need any machine or medical intervention at all to reproduce, which was a bizarre thought.

He picked up a towel from a shelf and wiped off the traces of gel from himself and the claxim and got dressed into his uniform jumpsuit. Just then a bright red warning appeared across most of his field of view along with a stern voice repeating the message: "change of vector maneuver in 15 seconds, prepare for 30 seconds of weightlessness."

Jax took hold of the chair that was magnetically locked to the floor and waited. He did not like weightlessness. The transitions into and out of it were even worse. He felt himself get lighter, his feet leaving the floor, while his stomach climbed much too high within his body. Counting the seconds, he was certain that more than 38 had gone by before he felt the main engines power up again and restore the expected acceleration against the floor. If he had to guess, he would have placed the new level at about 2.3g give or take a tenth. If they survived, the next few days were going to be exhausting.

Jax opened the door to his quarters, walked down the corridor, took the ship's elevator to the bio facility to take care of his assigned tasks.

* * *

Alaina Mithe, third officer, space systems, supervised two human crewmembers and dozens of artificial ones. Her brain hurt. She had been awake for more than a standard day running and re-running navigation simulations with her crew. The problem was the models they provided her did not agree in the slightest.

She closed her eyes as she waited for the updated plans to come back to her after the last course correction. She was receiving at least 9 distinct versions of "lowest risk trajectories", and 3 or 4 small variations on those. 4 of them happened to recommend the last vector change, so that was what she recommended to the captain. She hoped she could develop a more advantageous strategy soon. She hated hypergravity. It made her so exhausted.

The carbonaceous debris field stretched hundreds of astronomical units even out of the plane of the system. The blackness of the debris made getting accurate tracking information extremely difficult, with so little light being reflected and even most radio energy being absorbed. It was especially uncertain now that two of the eight sensor arrays had been damaged by earlier collisions. Each piece was so tiny, yet at the speed they were traveling, even small grains of carbon could be deadly.

Unfortunately, closing her eyes didn't stop the visual messages from her receiver. Those were wirelessly piped directly into the visual centers of her brain without the need for eyes to be involved. She was never quite sure how that worked, but it wasn't her area of expertise.

Ace, the virtual medical officer, appeared in her vision. "Alaina, you have exceeded recommended stress levels for over 6 hours. You have not had a rest period in over 30 hours. Your last meal was over 12 hours ago. I will be restricting your access to workstation applications and messages beginning in the next 15 minutes. Please comply with medical instructions to restore your access."

Then an audio message from Dr. Bowen arrived, their human flight surgeon. "Hi Alaina, I just approved the mandatory rest period recommendation from Ace. No virtual visit because our bandwidth is too precious right now. We need you to be at your best. Take as much of a break as you can possibly afford. I've ordered a minimum of 4 hours, but if you can spare more, please do so. The captain is depending on you to be sharp."

Somehow, the not too human voice made things better. Alaina liked virtual subordinates, but disliked virtual supervisors, no matter how scientifically justified their orders might be.

Alaina let her two human navigators know that she was going on a mandatory rest break. The virtual crew would find out directly from monitoring the ship-wide feed. She got up from her workstation a little too fast given the 2.3g acceleration, and touched a panel that folded it back into the wall while her bed deployed in its place. But, no laying down quite yet. If she did, she would sleep far longer than she knew she could spare.

She glanced at the uncancelable list on her left. Food; shower; claxim; sleep; food; exercise.

"Okay, then," she muttered. She opened her kitchen cabinet and picked out a tray of spiced legume stew that she placed in the warmer, followed by starting a large mug of herbal tea in her brewer.

With the 3-4 minutes of expected waiting, Alaina decided to take care of that shower. Opening the restroom, she took off the maintenance jumpsuit she had been wearing since trying to repair the damaged sensor array over 20 hours ago. Throwing that and her one piece undergarment into the washer, she stepped into the shower.

The water started flowing automatically, slowly increasing in warmth as her skin grew accustomed to the temperature. The shower couldn't take the tiredness from her eyes, but it did feel incredibly good after spending so much time at her workstation. The warm water rinsed away the sweat and grime from her skin and hair, the extra heaviness of the water from the 2.3g acceleration making the shower more of a massage than it usually is. She might have spent hours in there, if the system would have let her, or if she hadn't been so hungry. The smells of her warm food made her stomach rumble.

She stepped out of the shower, the water stopping as soon as she was out, and picked up her towel from the rack. Drying off her short hair and nearly hairless skin was a rapid process, and she tossed her towel into the dryer as she stepped back into her room.

Picking up a spoon and tearing the cover off of her stew, she leaned against the edge of the counter as she ravenously consumed the savory, spicy dish, nearly biting her tongue as she chewed the last spoonful. She thought about making and eating another meal, but decided that might be too much of a shock to her deprived system. So, instead, Alaina picked up her mug of tea and slowly sipped, letting the liquid warm her insides and slow her mind. As she finished the cup, she was finally close to agreeing that a bit of sleep would be good for her and she might even be able to fall asleep without trajectory permutations running through her mind.

Alaina touched the panel to deploy the claxim, watching as the machine silently and smoothly unfolded from the wall. She knew she needed this too; twice a day was the rule for a reason. It had been nearly a day and a half since her last session. Much longer of a delay and she would be putting her psychological and reproductive health at risk.

She climbed on the claxim seat, positioned her hands and feet on the conductive panels, and said, "begin." The room faded away, replaced with the virtual environment that was so familiar yet always not quite exactly the same. The rhythm of some natural yet unnatural beat sounded in the distance as her body was bathed in warmth that coursed in waves from her head on down to her toes.

The seat began to nudge against her lips already swollen from too much neglect. As the growing protrusion parted her slick cleft, she felt herself straining against the seat seeking more contact. Across her skin rode sensations of wet and dry, cool and warm, suction on her nipples and clit. Her moans were silent in her ears.

A growing pressure filled her insides as the tingling vibrations of her orgasm boiled throughout her body ending in a silent scream.

Though she could not feel it, Alaina knew that at this moment two flexible tubules were searching within her for any viable released reproductive cells. This search she guessed would be fruitless given her recent awakening from suspension and overall stress, but the machine had a function to perform.

Alaina released herself from the machine, and quickly wiped it and herself off. Before she could collapse from fatigue, she took a step towards the bed and flopped onto it, noticing the message from the claxim reported to her receiver.

[[4.7 minutes. 0 eggs retrieved. 3 eggs in last 28 days.]]

Not even bothering to pull a sheet over her body, Alaina quickly drifted off into a deep sleep as the system faded the lights out in her room, and left notes with the captain and medical to wake her as needed anytime after four hours.

* * *

There were 8 lifecraft on the Minke in addition to the orbital transfer shuttle that could not land on a planet. Each lifecraft could carry 3 people, 4, if it were a short trip, but those are rare in space. With the current crew and passengers at 18, there were more than enough lifecraft. The problem was, that if the Minke wasn't faring well in this system, the lifecraft were unlikely to do better.

The Minke was a long-distance specialty cargo and human specialist hauler traveling between Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, a trip just less than five and a half light years, or nearly 7 years of ship time given their expected top speed of 0.8c, acceleration and deceleration time. They were bringing tons of seeds, animal embryos, ingots of rare elements, and specialists like Jax to a new planetary colony.

Jax had loaded a fresh algae canister into each of the 8 lifecraft, and had started preparing the seed packages. If they had the capacity, Mike would probably have ordered that Jax load a portion of the frozen animal embryos, too, but there was limited cryo storage on the lifecraft, and anything that wasn't related to human reproduction was probably not going to win out in the list of priorities.

Jax followed the instructions to fill small stasis packages with samples from all onboard seed species. He thought that was probably a result of an artificial command crewmember providing instructions and not an artificial medical or botany crewmember. But, who was he to argue? Every artificial crewmember had the equivalent of more than 10 times his own training and experience.

Late in the second day after receiving his orders, Jax was able to start delivering the packages to each of the lifecraft, the delay thanks to another change of vector maneuver that left many of the individual seed canisters spread all over the bio workroom. He decided for his own sanity to keep the shipwide feed closed on his receiver and only respond when there were instructions or warnings specifically for him.

The lifecraft were located in pairs spread throughout the upper to lower decks of the ship, and with the size of the seed packages, Jax could only fit himself and two of the packages on the elevator at a time. With the new 2.5g acceleration, this was going to be a taxing chore.

Without any priority provided, Jax decided to start at lower decks and work his way up. The first and second pair of deliveries were accomplished without any difficulty, but in starting the third pair of deliveries, the fatigue of the increased "gravity" was really tiring him. He paused just outside the elevator to rest for a moment, while other crewmembers squeezed around him. Immediately, there was a sharp change in pressure and intense pain in his ears.

Warning alarms sounded, but not any with specific information for him beyond what he already knew, there had been an impact on the hull and they were losing air. A combination of maintenance bots and crew must have sealed the hole quickly, because he soon felt the pressure increasing and returning to normal. He decided to push through his pain and complete his deliveries as quickly as he could.

As Jax approached lifecraft 3 and 4, he came upon a crewmember lying in the corridor. He dropped his packages and approached to gauge his condition.

It was Wynn Novak, the assistant doctor. He had a pulse and was breathing, but there was blood coming from his nose and ears. Jax activated his receiver and made a report. Ace responded promptly and gave Jax a set of instructions. Jax quickly realized that Wynn wasn't unconscious, but rather disoriented and seemed to not be able to hear him. By relaying questions through Ace to Wynn's receiver, Jax was able to communicate and explain the current situation.

With Wynn stable, Jax decided to drop off his packages, but as he stood with the cases in his arms, there was a loud bang followed by another loss of pressure. Wynn slumped over and collapsed, while Jax stumbled, but continued on a few more steps to open the lifecraft doors. As he set the packages inside each lifecraft, he received the warning that he had been dreading: "Emergency: All crewmembers report to nearest lifecraft. This is not a drill. Once three crewmembers are aboard, evacuate."

Jax left the lifecraft doors open, and returned to the slumped form of Wynn in the narrow corridor. By pulling on his arms, Jax was able to drag Wynn to lifecraft 4. Either Jax's adrenaline surge was alleviating his fatigue or the acceleration from the engines was faltering or both, because he didn't think he could have pulled Wynn through the door by himself at 2.5g.