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“This had better be the colony or I’m eating my own liver,” Tinera says as everyone tries to crowd around the terminal in the Habitation Ring.
“Don’t do that,” the Friend says. “Transplants are risky.”
“You did Celi’s with no problems. One hundred per cent success rate. I feel perfectly safe.”
Lina nods. “That sounds like something patients would say.”
Tal speaks up from the keyboard. “So, do you want me to actually play the – ?”
“Yes!” Captains Kae Jin and Klees bark in unison.
A familiar voice comes through the speakers. “Crew of the Courageous. This is communications officer Hive Cattail. I’ve been nominated as our point of communication. Apparently. Apologies for the delay, we’ve been having some minor difficulties with our equipment that are now resolved.”
“Ooh, Cattail got a promotion,” Tinera whispers; Xanthe shushes her.
“Hylara welcomes you to the planet, and we’re excited to have you join the colony. Following this message is our location data. Please send through a thorough tally of the equipment and surviving colonists you have so that we can begin planning integration. Captain Klees, Captain Kae Jin, crew; congratulations on your successful flight. Your courage and sacrifice in taking this journey is an inspiration to us all, and we can’t wait to welcome you home. Cattail out.”
“Well,” Denish says after several seconds of silence. “That is more along the lines of an expected message.”
“Committee workshopped Official Message,” I agree. “Much more comforting.”
“Was that weird, or am I just being paranoid?” Xanthe asks. “Equipment difficulties causing a big delay? Then this port supervisor is suddenly the main communication guy? Is that weird?”
Earl shrugs. “These people clearly are not in communication with anybody in space. It’s entirely possible that their capability to receive and transmit our signals is poorly maintained; it probably hasn’t been maintained since they gave us up for dead. They have a sudden need for the equipment and for a communications officer, so they appoint one.”
“Interesting timing on the equipment failure though, and that’s a long time to repair it.”
“We do not know what their system is like, what materials they have available, or how complex the repair process is. If they live in an irradiated wasteland full of raging dust storms, minor disrepair could be a very big issue. The failure happening immediately after contact is a little strange, but not enough to base a whole conspiracy on, Earl thinks.”
“I do!” Tinera says. “Or… don’t. I mean, I do think it’s enough. I’m open to being incredibly suspicious of these bastards.”
“You’re suspicious of everyone,” Captain Klees points out.
Captain Kae Jin coughs pointedly, which turns into a hacking cough while Earl checks her pulse monitor, concerned. After ten seconds or so she sits back and closes her eyes. “The why of it doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’re going to Hylara either way. Crew, we need to get… Klees, can you…?”
“I’m on it,” Captain Klees says. He gives Earl a tiny nod, and Earl wheels Captain Kae Jin back toward the medbay. Captain Klees starts parcelling out data gathering missions among crew members to put together a response. “No rush,” he says. “They kept us waiting.”
Fortunately, the crew don’t pull the same trick that the colony apparently did and make me be the spokesperson just because I was the first person to send a message. A day later, Captain Klees delivers a short audio message and sends our data through.
In return, we get a little more information about the colony; not nearly as much as my sociologist brain wants, just details likely to help with resource dropping in integration (details that make me, if anything, more curious). But it’s something.
The Hylaran colony is three hundred and ninety two people, and it is just under ninety years old, which translates to about sixty Earth years. It’s equatorial, with sufficient food for their population and significant power reserves, running off some type of atomic reactor I’ve never heard of. Their day is just over nineteen hours long. Two hundred and thirty eight of the colonists are under twenty Earth years old, and it takes some prompting from our doctors demanding relevant health statistics to learn that there are no elderly – the whole population was born on Hylara. Which means that none of the initial colonists are still alive. Fascinating.
Adjusting to their calendar is going to take some work. The ship’s day/night light cycle is immediately reduced by one hour per day, with the intent to keep reducing it over time and sync our day/night cycles with the colony. I resign myself to a lifetime of not having a day-long sleep schedule; there’s no way I can adjust to nineteen hours. The year, too, will take some adjustment – I’m used to a calendar of twelve thirty-day months, each month consisting of five six-day weeks, plus a thirteenth bridging month of five to six days between years. I can only hope that Hylara use something as sensible; they haven’t shared their calendar with us yet. They tend not to share anything there isn’t a practical reason for.
We’re getting so close, now. Our trajectory puts quite some distance between Hylara and the sun, now, and the planet is distinguishable with the naked eye. (Well, through the cameras. Nobody’s going out there in space suits to try to look at it. But it’s distinguishable with no magnification.) The captains authorise turning off the engines to try to get some good, high-detail telescope shots, and it’s… well, cloudy, mostly. Clouds, with patches of yellow beneath. I’m not sure what else I’d been expecting, given the humidity and temperature. We verify old readings and Sam reports, slightly embarrassed, that their air pressure reading had been off – Hylara’s air pressure is slightly lower than Earth’s, not higher, which is a relief for everyone. For building canvas pressure vessels on the surface, ‘slightly below Earth pressure’ is the best possible result.
Then, one day, we have a meeting in the Recreation Ring.
“The initial colonisation plans were to send one captain planetside with a crew and leave the other on the Courageous to coordinate supply drops and colony construction,” Captain Kae Jin says. “The existence of the colony doesn’t change that, especially given how little we know about conditions down there. We’ve decided to send a captain and a small liaison team down there to arrange things from the planetside and avoid any miscommunication. And,” she gestures to her wheelchair and oxygen tanks, “it’s fairly clear which captain is best to make a descent.”
Captain Klees nods. “I’ll be taking a team from my crew exclusively,” he says. “The rest of you are clearly extremely competent, properly trained, and I have to assume you’d be good in a crisis, but given the nature of the situation I think it’s best to have a team of people who have a long history of working together in crises.”
“And for my part,” Captain Kae Jin says, “I’m far too selfish to send any of my crew down. Too many of us have died recently. I refuse to let any of you out of my sight ever again.” Her crew all hide smiles at this.
“Who’s going?” Tinera asks.
“That’s what this meeting is for,” Captain Kae Jin says. “I’d like to keep Denish, if he’s amenable, and Sam. They have more experience maintaining and piloting the ship in its current state than my people do, and the safety of the ship is the highest priority until all important supplies are down.”
“And I insist that at least one of my doctors stays up here, too,” Captain Klees adds. “It’s going to be too much work for Earl, especially once you start reviving colonists. Like you say, the ship is critical; you’ll need sufficient medical help. I’d like to take the other doctor with me; we have no idea what the colony’s medical systems are like and a professional eye will help us prioritise supply drops.” He looks to the doctors. “Preferences?”
Lina and the Friend exchange a look.
“Lina is more learned when it comes to revival complications,” the Friend says, “and her experiments are up here. She should stay. This Friend has worked with refugee evacuations and suchlike before and knows how to prioritise medicine supplies and assess efficiency in field hospitals.”
“The Friend comes,” Captain Klees says. “I’d like Aspen, too; their sociology expertise could come in handy. Captain Kae Jin, do you need anyone else of mine?”
“Do we need Tal?” Captain Kae Jin asks Asteria.
Asteria shrugs. “Possibly? I mean, not right now; I think I have a handle on things. But if some other unforeseen problem rears its head, I don’t have the experience with these broken systems that Tal does.”
“That’s immaterial,” Tal shrugs. “We have radio contact. If anything happens you need backup on, you can just send me the data while I’m down with the aliens.”
Lina shakes her head. “Tal, they’re humans, not – ”
“They were born out here, weren’t they? Not on Earth, They’re aliens.”
“Me and Captain Kae Jin were born on the moon,” Tinera points out. “Are we aliens?”
“An Earth satellite is practically Earth.”
“I was born on Mars,” Asteria points out.
“The initial landing party,” Captain Klees cuts in before this can get out of hand, “is myself, the Friend, Tal, Aspen, and Tinera. Everyone else will stay aboard for now. Any objections?”
Tinera reaches for Denish’s hand. They give each other a squeeze, but don’t object. The captains both nod briskly.
“Okay,” Captain Klees says. “We’ve got some preparation to do.”
And we do. We select a descent pod. We learn the procedures. We run drill after drill and go through exactly what to expect and what to do in an emergency. We pull into orbit around Hylara with surprisingly little incident, and Xanthe elects to go through the electrostatic shield and see if killing the synnerve will solve their adrenalin problem, which also, to everyone’s genuine shock, goes without incident. Will killing the synnerve work? We won’t find out until long after our away team is on the ground.
The main problem with the drop is the cloud cover. The pods are designed for a parachute drop; we’ll be coasting down via landing parachute with very little propulsion, which is only now starting to sound utterly terrifying, why did I get on this ship, why did I agree to be part of the landing mission, why did anyone think the Javelin Program was a good idea. I comfort myself with the knowledge that everyone aboard is going to have to go down eventually; at least we’re getting the drop out of the way early. Besides, there are small engines for emergency steering and to soften the final descent. So it’ll be fine.
The cloud cover obscures our view of the ground and ability to predict landing conditions, which is an issue if we want to land as close as possible to the colony without actually endangering the colony. Fortunately, the colony have their own weather monitoring equipment, and between the two of us we can probably predict the drop with reasonable accuracy. Probably.
Dropping from space is not a fast process, even in a thin atmosphere. Goods can drop faster than people, and we don’t have an ocean to land in, meaning we’ll be playing it safe; the descent will take just over three hours. Three hours in which our main brake will be sheets of canvas dragging air, ready to drag our vessel back and forth on whatever wind currents happen to be about. The drop pods have propulsion systems for attitude adjustment and emergency braking, but not particularly large or complicated ones. It’s entirely possible that we could find ourselves off course.
The colony, to our surprise, insist that the planetary air is thin but safe to breathe, and that if we’re stranded far from the base and our atmospheric systems are compromised, that’s not a big deal so long as we’re within retrieval distance. Personally, I don’t think their definition of ‘safe’ matches up with ours. There is simply no possible way that a planet full of alien life is safe. It’s best to land with intact spaceships in an intact pressure vessel, able to walk or be taken to a nice isolated base in another intact pressure vessel.
And soon, very soon, we’re going to have to do it.
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Derin Edala 
> We pull into orbit around Hylara
Time! To orbit! Zero!!!
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I can’t believe we’re here!
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Time to orbit: 0
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No no no no, this feels like a bad idea. There’s nothing about the communication coming from Hylara that *isn’t* sus. I can’t think ok one thing!
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No no no no no, this feels like a bad idea. There’s nothing about the communication from Hylara that *isn’t* sus. I can’t think of a single thing! What if they’re just trying to get their hands on the supplies and will immediately keep the landing party from communicating with the crew on the shop. Oh gosh, I am not handling this chapter well?
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The Courageous has been traveling for about 130ish years. With the colony 60 years old, that’s 70 Earth years to beat the Courageous to the planet. Since the Courageous spent double the time, they were supposed to spend about 70 years. That means the colony was supposed to show up right when the Courageous did.
There are 154 people over 20, just under 40% of the population. That’s a lot of kids. (I’m assuming they mean 20 in Earth years since in Hylara years it would be even younger.) Assuming everyone allowed on the Courageous was over 20, that number is going to jump to around 90%. It’s about a 500% increase in total people.
…What happened that killed all the old people? Does Hylara not… allow old people? Are they that strapped for resources? I’m suddenly reminded of CopyKate and the fight between the retirees and everyone else. Could it have been some kind of disease and they needed to grow a bunch of people in artificial uteruses after it passed?
Are all the original colonists hiding under a table going “Shh! Don’t tell them we’re here!” because they know the Courageous crew will have Questions without any good answers?
The supply of people that could explain the mysteries about Antarctica and the AI project is getting smaller. First Dor didn’t wake up, then zero conspirators from the 1st crew lived, and now the original colonists are dead. When will someone explain the mysteries!? (I wonder if Cattail or the young people of Hylara know anything about the mysterious mysteries Aspen and co keep encountering. Maybe someone left behind a scrapbook titled “Evil AI Plan”)
Since Cattail isn’t from Earth, Storgalthan might be a purely Hylaran reference. This also means that someone brought Aspen’s books to the colony, so they’re probably very famous. I don’t think Aspen is prepared to be surrounded by adoring fans that know nothing about that time they threatened a guy with a knife. They didn’t mention that possibility during the meeting, but the thought has probably crossed someone’s mind (not Aspen’s for some reason).
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I mean, the Courageous has also been traveling at, what, 1/10 the speed of light? Time calculations here are, unfortunately, not that straightforward–once you hit a speed as fast as that, you have to start factoring in relativity, which means that probably more time has passed for the Hylara colony than the 130ish years the Courageous has been traveling. (Unless I read your comment wrong and you already did factor in relativity, which is possible.)
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I tried to keep all the calculations based on time experienced by people not traveling at near light speed. Aspen mentioned that 40 years on the Courageous equated to about 130ish years on Earth, and the Hylara colony hasn’t been experiencing light speed since they arrived.
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I have been wishing for a 12 month, 30 day month, 5-6 day bonus month my whole life! that would be the actual best. I’m glad to see it included here.
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So much for my thought of 13 28-day months, with 1-2 leftover days each year.
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I have been wishing for a 30 day month, 12 month year with bonus days at the end for years now! love getting to see it here. also why do I think they ate the old people
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Hive Cattail… that could also be part of a new Hylaran naming scheme. Hive is named after a beehive or after the hive-like structure or shape of the colony, and cattail could be one of the edible plants they brought over.
I’m making a second comment about my theory why they had “minor difficulties” with their equipment. In their rush to tell someone that ASPEN GREAVES JUST CONTACTED THEM, they accidentally knocked over the radio equipment, breaking it into tiny pieces. They were able to the listening part working quickly, but sending back a message took more time. (Cattail is surprised that they were allowed near the radio equipment at all to send the message.)
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Actually, that is both sensical and hysterically funny.
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Of the five people they’re sending down, either three or four of them are convicts (who knows if the people on the surface will consider Adin’s sentence completed). They’re going to the colony that, as far as we know, was meant to be built with slave labour. There’s no way this will go over smoothly, especially when they realize that the crew has disabled their kill switches.
Also, Aspen threatened the CEO at knifepoint. None of the others know the whole story. I’m willing to bet that it’s going to be revealed in the next few chapters, and the people on the surface probably won’t be too happy about Aspen being there.
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Ah yes they’re definitely going to have a perfectly normal landing with no freak weather. Definitely.
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Yeah, I don’t trust that communication. “Technical difficulties” sounds like a way to hide “we spent weeks deciding what to tell you cos things are wierd down here/we don’t like you/insert problem here”. Also I’m gonna miss Denish so much auugh.
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So exciting!!!
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Okay I’m getting SERIOUSLY bad vibes from this colony. I don’t know what, but something fucky is happening/has happened there, and I feel like we won’t find all of it out for quite a few chapters
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There are three things I’ve speculating on
1. The colony’s vibe is very… haphazard, a little unprofessional. It makes sense considering teenagers and children make up the majority of the population, as well as all the originals who knew what they were doing being dead.
2. The colony says the air is thin but safe. If the colony is made by the same people working on the AI project and who made the weird synerves, then DIVRs may be among the majority and the newest generation has no idea what safe limits are for people without that gene. DIVRs can take pressure changes and low oxygen better than the rest, so the air might be fine for DIVRs but not anyone else. Adin, Aspen, and the Friend should be fine but Tal and Tinera might not be.
(Perhaps the reason there are so many young people is because the colony suddenly needed a ton of DIVRs asap and a bunch were grown in artificial wombs. This might also be related to the reason there are no elderly; a lot of people died of something that wouldn’t kill DIVRs, or just a lot of people died of something if the majority was already DIVRs.)
(I wonder if the DIVR geneset is popular among Antarcticans. It would explain why the viability drop was so unexpected; it was only tested on DIVRs.)
3. The colonists are definitely hiding something. They were very reluctant to explain the lack of elderly. Perhaps resorting to cannibalizing the dead? As long as they’re not killing people for food and just eating people who happened to die, it’s probably fine. They might be embarrassed about it until they hear about Arborean funeral rites.
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Whelp if they’re all teenagers, there’s only a few hundred and no one knows what’s going on that actually makes all this a lot LESS sinister lol. Totally makes sense that they’d spend a few days freaking out and trying to figure out what to do and then appoint the random guy that got the initial message. Big “we weren’t ever expecting the grownups to show up and now we might be in trouble” vibes.
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“We pull into orbit around Hylara with surprisingly little incident” the story is NAMED “time to orbit” and it just happened like nothing!
i’m going to be so sad to leave this completely normal spaceship for the no doubt completely normal colony
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YESSSS a proper calendar with 30 days in each month, probably 5- or 6-day weeks, every month starting on the same day of the week, and Christmas/Solstice/etc not randomly falling on a Sunday one year and a random Tuesday the next, and Thanksgiving being on the same date every year, if anyone still celebrates it ❤❤❤❤❤❤ and whatever’s the deal with easter (Sunday after the first Friday after the first full moon after the solstice? something like that?)
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“Which means that none of the initial colonists are still alive. Fascinating.”
No. Aspen. No. The word you want here isn’t “fascinating” the word you want is WORRISOME!
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Tell me why I bingeread this entire series over the course of a week only to catch up to this killer of a cliffhanger. WE’RE IN ORBIT BABEY AAAAAAHHHH
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Everyone get out your disaster bingo cards!! Let’s see how badly this landing goes! Also, that farewell handhold between Denish and Tinera has me incredibly worried for Tinera’s safety. But she’s strong so I hope she can handle the possible narrative murder attempt.
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Just finished binging the entire series! Oh boy!
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TIME TO ORBIT ZEROOOOOOOO this has been a joy to keep up with, let’s GOOOOO
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I’ve been catching up over the last few days after finding a post about this on tumblr, and I just want to say how amazing this whole story is!!!! The world you’ve built is so detailed and the mysteries that have been slowly unraveling and reraveling tickle my brain in the BEST way possible. Can’t wait to read what happens next! I have a sinking feeling that it’s not going to be good lmao
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I’ve been catching up on this story over the last few days, and I just want to say… WOW!!!! What a world you’ve built! I can’t wait to see what happens to Aspen and their crew next, but I have a feeling that it’s not going to be good!
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Pretty sure the captain who died but left her journals, mentioned the colony on the planet were expecting the Courageous
to be arriving with the fancy new brain jacking AI?
I need to reread again, I’m getting hazey on the details.
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I found a link to the first part of this by accident and I have done nothing but read this story for like two solid days. This story has everything I have ever wanted and I love every single page of it!
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I find the fact that there are no elderly there to be very suspicious.
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yeah, I hope they’re not killing/recycling those who grow too old to work. apart from being fucked up on its own, that’d suggest a ruthlessly utilitarian ethos that can’t mean anything good for the majority of the courageous’ passengers
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“That sounds like something patients would say.”
lmao
“I’m used to a calendar of twelve thirty-day months, each month consisting of five six-day weeks, plus a thirteenth bridging month of five to six days between years.”
We could have had it all
“They were born out here, weren’t they? Not on Earth, They’re aliens.”
Tal’s logic is watertight
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